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BOOKS BY 

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THE POETS AND POETRY OF IRELAND. With 
Historical and Critical Essays and Notes. i2mo, 
$2.00. 

SAM HOUSTON AND THE WAR OF INDEPEN- 
DENCE IN TEXAS. With Portrait and Map. 8vo, 

$2.00. 

STUDIES IN FOLK-SONGS AND POPULAR POE- 
TRY, nmo, $1.50. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 

Boston and New York. 



STUDIES IN FOLK-SONG AND 
POPULAR POETRY 



BY 



ALFRED M. WILLIAMS 

AUTHOR OF "SAM HOUSTON AND THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE IN TEXAS : 



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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(Stye Biticr^itie $tz&> Cambriboe 

1894 






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Copyright, 1894, 
By ALFRED M. WILLIAMS. 

All rights reserved. 



Gift 
W. L. Shoemaker 
1 S '06 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass.,U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. 






TO C. A. W. 

How oft have I in days forever gone 
Heard thy pure voice in some old, simple song, 
With happy sadness and sweet grief prolong 
The dear complaint of some fond heart forlorn, 
That wept in music from grief's harp-strings drawn; 
While all the joys that to full bliss belong 
Bloomed in thy radiant grace, a magic throng, 
And love enwrapped thee in its shining morn. 
But now, alas, those mournful strains of old' 
Touch my sad heart with pains it cannot bear ; 
Their music breathes the anguish they enfold, 
And sorrow sings with each enchanted air, 
While gleams the vision of that face so fair, 
Those dear brown eyes, that hair of softened gold. 



NOTE. 

Of the essays in this volume, that on American 
Sea Songs has been published in the Atlantic 
Monthly, and that on Folk-Songs of the Civil 
War in the American Folk-Lore Journal. Those 
on English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Lady 
Nairne and her Songs, and William Thorn, the 
Weaver Poet, were contributed as literary articles 
to the Providence Sunday Journal. It may be 
thought that the essays on Sir Samuel Ferguson 
and Celtic Poetry, Lady Nairne, and William 
Thorn do not come within the strict limits of folk- 
song and popular poetry, but they have a cognate 
interest as illustrating the development of folk- 
song in cultivated literature, and seem to me to be 
within a reasonable approximation to the title of 
the volume. 
Providence, R. I., July 12, 1894. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

American Sea Songs 1 

Folk-Songs of the Civil War 36 

English and Scottish Popular Ballads ... 71 
Lady Nairne and Her Songs ....<.. 102 
Sir Samuel Ferguson and Celtic Poetry . . . 131 
William Thom, the Weaver Poet ..... 166 

Folk-Songs of Lower Brittany 189 

The Folk-Songs of Poitou 220 

Some Ancient Portuguese Ballads .... 242 

Hungarian Folk-Songs 282 

Folk-Songs of Roumania 309 



STUDIES IN FOLK-SONG AND 
POPULAR POETRY. 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

Oh, fare ye well, my pretty, fair maids, 
I 'm bound for the Rio Grande ! 

Ri-o-Rio ! 
I 'm bound for the Rio Grande ! 

No one who is old enough to remember the glo- 
rious spectacle of a full-rigged American clipper 
ship getting under full sail outside of the head- 
lands of a harbor, after having been cast off by 
the tug, is likely to have forgotten the sight : the 
white sails dropping from the yards, being sheeted 
home, and swelling out to the fresh wind, until a 
cloud of canvas sparkled in the sun; the strong 
and graceful life which the ship took on under 
their power ; the foam curling up under the bow 
with her forward rush ; the great plain of the ocean, 
with all its free airs and salt scents, beckoning to 
life and adventure seaward round the world. To 
this, to one on board or near enough to hear, will 
be added the indefinable and mysterious charm of 
the sailors' chants, as they haul in the bowline, 



2 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

and tauten up the tacks and sheets by a pull re- 
quiring unison of effort ; and the cadence, at once 
long-drawn and vigorous, fills the air with a magic 
voice of the wind and the sea. It has the melopoe- 
ism, if it may be so called, of the cadence of nature, 
and takes its note from the solitude and melancholy 
of the world, never more impressive than upon 
the vast plain of the sea. It has been heard from 
immemorial time, since the first oarsmen pulled to- 
gether along the coasts of the Indian Ocean, and 
possesses the same essence in whatever language it 
is uttered; and, while it has its practical purpose 
in securing unison and accentuation of effort, it 
would be a mistake to suppose it without origin in 
and appeal to the innate impulse for the expression 
of sentiment in melody in the heart of man. Every 
sea captain knows, or used to know, how much 
more quickly the anchor came up, or how much 
more hearty were the pulls on the bowlines, if 
there were a full-lunged and melodious leader for 
the "shanty;" and his practical - minded mate 
would at times shout, when the chorus was going 
faintly and mechanically, " Sing out there, can't 
ye ? " with the same purpose with which he would 
exhort the men to take a stronger pull. Con- 
versely, a poor leader, or a second who could not 
or would not keep in proper time, was a decided 
injury to the effectiveness of the labor; and it 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 3 

sometimes happened that an energetic captain, 
when his ship was being got under way, would 
step up to a sailor, apparently heaving sturdily at 
the windlass, and knock him sprawling, for the 
reason that he had detected him giving the wrong 
time to the chant, out of mischief, or for the sake 
of testing the sharpness and intelligence of the 
" old man." 

The words of these windlass and bowline " shan- 
ties " have, of course, little of the element of fin- 
ished poetry about them. They are not songs, 
but chants, whose purpose is to give accentuation 
and force to the exertion of united strength rather 
than to the expression of sentiment, and of which 
the rhythmical melody is the essential element. 
Whether they be new or old, they always have 
been essentially improvisations, capable of being 
stopped at any moment or added to indefinitely, 
and, like the refrains of the old ballads, are depend- 
ent upon the sound rather than the sense for their 
effect. Nevertheless, however imperfect and indefi- 
nite their expression, they took their tone and color 
originally from the elements in which they were 
born, and gave out not only the voice of the sea 
and the wind, the notes of the never silent JEolian 
harp of the cordage and the bellying sails, but the 
prevailing sentiment of the human heart upon the 
great deep, its underlying oppression, its longing 



4 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

for home, its craving for relief from monotony ; 
and it is a dull ear that would not detect this, 
under the most absurd and uncouth words ever 
strung together in a sailor's shanty. 

As among the seamen of all races, the chants of 
the American sailors, before they were so reduced 
in quality and number by the combined influence 
of steam vessels and a protective tariff, were of 
ancient and indefinite origin, and were constantly 
being altered or added to by circumstance and im- 
provisation. They came, of course, first from the 
English seamen, who were our sailors' ancestors 
and associates, to whom at least the element de- 
scended from the songs to which the galleys of the 
sea kings of Scandinavia were impelled over the 
foaming brine, or the Celtic coracle was paddled on 
the lonely lake ; and it is impossible, in a mass of 
rude verse, of little definite meaning, of a fluid and 
fluctuating form, and handed down from lip to lip 
without ever, except incidentally, having been put 
into print and preserved, to fix the origin or the 
date of creation of any of these songs. There are 
traces of old phrases and archaisms, ancient words 
strangely metamorphosed into a semblance of mod- 
ern meaning, and all such settlings and deposits as 
are to be found in the geological strata of spoken 
language, — references to mermaids, sea-serpents, 
and survival of myths regarding the powers of the 



AMEBIC AN SEA SONGS. 5 

sea and air ; but they are of no such distinct historic 
value as are the indications to be found in the more 
definite folk-lore in prose or verse, which have the 
element of dramatic interest and narrative. It is 
to be remembered that these chants, as we have 
said, were essentially improvisations, with a pur- 
pose different from ordinary song, — that is, to 
give the governing power of melody to united exer- 
tion, — and that whatever color and substance they 
have are extraneous, and not inherent. What is 
distinctively American can be determined only by 
local allusions or by definite knowledge of their 
origin: the first are of very little value, for an 
English chant, with its local allusions, might be 
very readily altered into an American one by the 
substitution of American names ; and in regard to 
the second, as has been said, the songs were born, 
and passed from mouth to mouth, and from ship to 
ship, without any one's knowing or caring where 
they originated. Nevertheless, the American sail- 
ors, when there were American sailors, had as 
strong a national and provincial feeling as those of 
any other country ; were capable of making their 
own chants, if not as much given to improvisation 
as those of the Latin races ; and had a selection of 
local names as sonorous and as readily adapted to 
the needs of a rhythmical chorus as those of any 
English-speaking people. The Kio Grande and 



6 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

the Shenandoah were as mouth-filling- and sonorous 
as the High Barbarie or any of the refrains of the 
English shanties, and the American sailor sheeted 
home his canvas with Virginia Ashore, or Balti- 
more, or Down to Mobile Bay in his remembrance 
as well as on his lips. 

Premising that American shanties are not 
American sea songs in any definite sense of the 
term, and fulfill only the conditions to which they 
are subject as aids to labor and stimulants to exer- 
tion, we may take a specimen or two to show what 
they were like. It is needless to say that neither 
the words nor a musical notation would give any 
idea of their effect when sung with full-throated 
chorus to sea and sky, and that their peculiar me- 
lodious cadence and inflection can be caught only 
by hearing them. Like the chants of the negro 
slaves, which they resemble in many respects, 
musical notes would give only the skeleton of the 
melody, which depends for its execution upon an 
element which it defies the powers of art to sym- 
bolize. They have various forms, — a continued 
and unbroken melody, as when turning the cap- 
stan or pumping, or they show an emphatic accen- 
tuation at regular intervals, as when stretching out 
a bowline with renewed pulls; and such as they 
are, they are given precisely as sung, with a de- 
pendence upon the reader's imagination to supply 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 1 

in some degree the cadence and accentuation. 
The following are good specimens of the bowline 
chants. 

Solo. I wish I was in Mobile Bay, 
Chorus. Way-hay, knock a man down ! 
Solo. A-rolling cotton night and day, 
Chorus. This is the time to knock a man down ! 

And so on ad infinitum, until the hoarse " Belay ! " 
of the mate or the " bosun " ends it. 

Oh, Shenandoah 's a rolling river, 

Hooray, you rolling river, 
Oh, Shenandoah 's a rolling river, 

Ah-hah, I 'm bound away to the wild Missouri ! 
Oh, Shenandoah 's a packet sailor, etc. 

My Tommy 's gone, and I '11 go too, 

Hurrah, you high-low ! 
For without Tommy I can't do, 

My Tommy 's gone a high-low ! 

My Tommy 's gone to the Eastern shore, 

Chorus. 
My Tommy 's gone to Baltimore, etc. 

A favorite and familiar pulling song is Whiskey 
for my Johnny : — 

Whiskey is the life of man, 

Whiskey- Johnny ! 
We '11 drink our whiskey while we can, 

Whiskey for my Johnny ! 

I drink whiskey, and my wife drinks gin, 

Chorus. 



8 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

The way she drinks it is a sin, 

Chorus. 
I and my wife cannot agree, 

Chorus. 
For she drinks whiskey in her tea, 

Chorus. 
I had a girl ; her name was Lize, 

Chorus. 
And she put whiskey in her pies, 

Chorus. 
Whiskey 's gone, and I '11 go too, 

Chorus. 
For without whiskey I can't do, etc. 

A very enlivening windlass or pumping chant is 
I 'm Bound for the Kio Grande : — 

I 'm bound away this very day, 

Oh, you Rio ! 
I 'm bound away this very day, 

I 'm bound for the Rio Grande ! 
And away, you Rio, oh, you Rio ! 
I 'm bound away this ve-ry day, 

I 'm bound for the Rio Grande ! 

Another is Homeward Bound with a Roaring 

Breeze : — 

We 're homeward bound with a roaring breeze, 

Good-by, fare you well ! 
We 're homeward bound with a roaring breeze, 
Hurrah, my boys ! We 're homeward bound ! 

I wrote to Kitty, and she was well, 

Good-by, fare you well ! 
She rooms at the Astor and dines at the Bell, 

Hurrah, my boys ! We 're homeward bound ! 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 9 

There were many, with slight American vari- 
ants, which were undoubtedly of English origin, 
and have been heard on English merchant ships 
from time immemorial; some which relate espe- 
cially to the operations of whaling ; and some 
which had their origin on the river flatboats and 
in the choruses of the roustabouts on the Ohio and 
Mississippi, and have been only slightly changed 
for salt-water purposes, the quality being as little 
varied as the number is endless. Their essential 
quality was that of an improvised chant, and the 
dominant feeling was to be found in the inter- 
mingling of the words and the cadence, as in the 
apparently meaningless refrain of the old ballads. 
They expressed, through all their rudeness and 
uncouthness, and more through the melody than 
the words, the minor chords which distinguish all 
folk music, the underlying element in the human 
heart oppressed by the magnitude and solitude of 
nature, as well as the enlivening spirit of strong 
exertion ; and no sensitive ear could ever call them 
really gay, however vigorous and lively they might 
be. The shanties are passing away with the substi- 
tution of iron cranks and pulleys for the muscles 
of men, and the clank of machinery has taken the 
place of the melodious chorus from human throats. 
It is not probable that they will ever entirely dis- 
appear so long as men go down to the sea in ships ; 



10 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

but whatever life and flavor they had will fade 
away, and the first-class leading tenor among the 
" shanty men " will vanish with the need and ap- 
preciation of his skill. As for the old words, 
they will also be utterly lost, because they have no 
existence except in oral recitation and memory, 
and do not contain enough of the elements of pure 
poetry to secure their preservation in print, as the 
folk songs and ballads have been preserved. 
They are relics of custom rather than of litera- 
ture ; and although any poet or musician who 
deals with the sea will miss a source of very valu- 
able inspiration if he does not possess himself of 
the spirit of their weird melody and the uncon- 
scious power of their vigorous rhythm, in them- 
selves they are likely to be lost with the chants of 
the Phoenician sailors or the rowers of the galley 
of Ulysses, which they have succeeded, and some 
of whose melody they have perhaps reproduced. 

The genuine sea songs differ from the shanties 
in that they had a definite poetical purpose to tell 
a story or express emotion, and were not merely 
words strung together to give voice to a rhythm of 
labor. It cannot be said that the genius of the 
American sailor has turned itself especially to ex- 
pressing his emotions in song, any more than that 
of the English. His nature is entirely too prac- 
tical, and the touch of tender sentiment which, in 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 11 

the Scotch nature, produced the beautiful fishing 
songs of the coast and the grand rowing and boat 
songs of the Western Islands, is wanting alike in 
him and his English associate. 

It would probably astonish most readers to be 
told that English literature is singularly deficient 
in sea songs, when they have in memory the noble 
odes of Campbell, the long list of the Tom Bow- 
lings and Jack Junks of Dibdin, Cherry's Bay of 
Biscay and The Minute Gun at Sea, and the many 
good songs about ships and sea fights by Barry 
Cornwall, Cunningham, and many others. But 
these songs were not written by sailors. There 
never has been any English sailor, except the re- 
spectable William Falconer, the author of The 
Shipwreck, in several cantos of desiccated decasyl- 
labic verse, who has written of the sea in verse 
from the standpoint of actual experience, or to do 
for it in poetry what Captain Marryat, Michael 
Scott, and W. Clark Russell have done in prose. 
English sea songs have been written by landsmen ; 
even the charming Wapping Old Stairs is a song 
of the waterside, and not of the ocean ; and as for 
the famous heroes of Dibdin's nautical songs, 
including Tom Bowling himself, they are very 
much, as Thackeray said, "har-lar" Mr. T. P. 
Cooke, the actor, who personated the gallant Jack 
Tar in a very blue jacket with very bright buttons, 



12 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

and very white duck trousers, and appealed to 
" England, Home, and Beauty " as represented in 
the cits of the gallery at Sadler's Wells theatre. 
Dibdin's heroes smell of stage gas rather than of 
tar, and their purpose and effect were very much 
more to persuade susceptible landsmen that the 
British navy was an elysium, in which beating 
Frenchmen was a glorious episode in an existence 
devoted mainly to passing the can between decks 
at sea and basking in the smiles of lovely Nan and 
faithful Poll on shore, than to tell what the seamen 
themselves really felt about it. The writers of the 
ordinary English sea songs had their lodgings in 
the neighborhood of Drury Lane rather than in the 
forecastle, and their inspiration was as strictly 
commercial as that of Mr. Slum, who supplied the 
anagrams and acrostics announcing the treasures 
in Mrs. Jarley's waxworks. Some of them are 
good in their way, as are a few of those of Dibdin 
and Andrew Cherry, and particularly The Saucy 
Arethusa, in which there is a real flavor of the sea 
spirit, and which was written by one Prince Hoare, 
a comic opera libretto writer of sixty years ago ; 
the author, by the way, of Mrs. Micawber's favor- 
ite song, Little Tafflin with the Silken Sash. But 
when one comes to look for real forecastle songs, 
written by a sailor, and smelling of pitch and tar, 
one finds very few. Doubtless some have been 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 13 

lost, although there is a strong vitality to anything 
that is good; but except Kobert Kidd, Sailing 
down on the High Barbarie, Captain Glen, Jacky 
Tar with his Trousers on, — the immortal song 
which appealed to the feeling heart of Captain 
Edward Cuttle,— 

I know you would have me wed a farmer, 
And not give me my heart's delight ; 

Give me the lad whose tarry trousers 
Shine to me like diamonds bright, — 

The Mermaid, and few others, there is nothing 
which indicates that the British sailor was given to 
expressing himself in verse beyond the simple exi- 
gencies of the shanty. The case was very much the 
same with the American, and, under ordinary cir- 
cumstances, it would be as vain to look for poetical 
feeling in the shrewd, practical-minded, and gritty 
New England seaman as in his more stolid and 
coarse-fibred English associate. Nevertheless, so 
much of the best spirit of the American people was 
once turned toward the sea for its field of action, 
its naval history has been so inspiring to national 
pride, and its record of adventure in all parts of 
the world has been so remarkable that it would 
have been impossible that it should not have pro- 
duced some worthy or at least illustrative fruit in 
poetry. 

The era of the Revolution was not distinguished 



14 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

for its naval exploits, except the memorable raid of 
the Scotch adventurer, John Paul Jones, upon the 
English seas, and the fight of the Bonhomme Rich- 
ard with the Serapis and the Countess of Scarbor- 
ough, for the reason that the colonies had no war- 
ships, and no means of procuring any. There 
were, however, a few privateers: the Hyder Ali, 
commanded by Captain Barney, which won a vic- 
tory over the British vessel General Monk, and was 
celebrated in verse by Philip Freneau, and for 
which he wrote a recruiting song, with at least one 
verse of a practical tendency : — 

Here 's grog enough ; come drink about. 
I know your hearts are firm and stout. 
American blood will never give out, 
As often we have proved it ; 

the Fair American, commanded by Captain Daniel 
Hawthorne, which fought a British snow, laden with 
troops, off the coast of Portugal, and whose exploits 
are recorded in a ballad of very considerable spirit, 
and evidently by one of the crew ; and some others, 
who did not happen to have a poet on board or a 
laureate on shore, and are not embalmed in verse. 
To this period, however, belongs what is, perhaps, 
the very best of American sea songs. We do not 
know whether its authorship was of that time or not, 
although it probably was, and from internal evi- 
dence would seem to have been composed by one of 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 15 

the very crew of the Banger, Paul Jones's ship, 
which escaped from a British squadron in the Irish 
Channel in 1778. It was first published by Com- 
modore Luce, in his collection of Naval Songs, with 
the statement that it was taken down from the reci- 
tation of a sailor. It is one of the gems of fore- 
castle song, has the full scent of the brine and the 
gale, and the ship does not manoeuvre as if she were 
a wagon on dry land, as was said of Allan Cunning- 
ham's account of Paul Jones's cruises. The title 
given is 

THE YANKEE MAN-OF-WAK. 

'T is of a gallant Yankee ship that flew the stripes and stars, 
And the whistling wind from the west-nor'-west blew through 

the pitch-pine spars. 
With her starboard tacks aboard, my boys, she hung upon the 

gale, 
On an autumn night we raised the light on the old head of 

Kinsale. 

It was a clear and cloudless night, and the wind blew steady 
and strong, 

As gayly over the sparkling deep our good ship bowled 
along ; 

With the foaming seas beneath her bow the fiery waves she 
spread, 

And bending low her bosom of snow, she buried her lee cat- 
head. 

There was no talk of short'ning sail by him who walked the 
poop, 



16 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

And under the press of her pond'ring jib the boom bent like 
a hoop, 

And the groaning water-ways told the strain that held her 
stout main tack. 

But he only laughed as he glanced abaft at a white and sil- 
very track. 

The mid-tide meets in the channel waves that flow from shore 

to shore, 
And the mist hung heavy upon the land from Featherstone 

to Dunmore ; 
And that sterling light on Tusker rock, where the old bell 

tolls the hour, 
And the beacon light that shone so bright was quenched on 

Waterford tower. 

The nightly robes our good ship wore were her three topsails 

set, 
The spanker and her standing jib, the spanker being fast. 
" Now, lay aloft, my heroes bold, let not a moment pass ! " 
And royals and topgallant sails were quickly on each mast. 

What looms upon the starboard bow ? What hangs upon 
the breeze ? 

'T is time our good ship hauled her wind abreast the old Sal- 
tees ; 

For by her ponderous press of sail and by her consorts four 

We saw our morning visitor was a British man-of-war. 

Up spoke our noble captain then, as a shot ahead of us 

passed, 
" Haul snug your flowing courses, lay your topsail to the 

mast ! " 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 17 

The Englishmen gave three loud hurrahs from the deck of 

their covered ark, 
And we answered back by a solid broadside from the decks 

of our patriot bark. 

" Out, booms ! Out, booms ! " our skipper cried, " Out, 
booms, and give her sheet ! " 

And the swiftest keel that ever was launched shot ahead of 
the British fleet. 

And amidst a thundering shower of shot, with stunsails hoist- 
ing away, 

Down the North Channel Paul Jones did steer, just at the 
break of day. 

The naval war of 1812 was a glorious epoch in 
American history. The achievements of the troops 
were very far from creditable, with a few excep- 
tions, including, of course, the great one of the 
repulse of British regulars at New Orleans ; but on 
the ocean the American sailors proved themselves 
quite the equal, if not more, of the English seamen, 
who had learned to consider themselves invincible, 
and despised the petty fleet of half a dozen cruisers, 

— not a single line-of -battle ship in the number, 

— which they had force enough to sweep off the 
seas without a struggle, and which they finally did 
blockade into inaction. There was quite an out- 
burst of surprise, incredulity, and indignation in 
England, when the news came in that British frig- 
ates, one after another, the Guerriere, the Java, 
and the Macedonian, had been captured in single- 



18 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

ship fights by American ships of the same grade, 
and that in contests between vessels of smaller size, 
like the Wasp and the Frolic, the Hornet and the 
Peacock, Yankee pluck and seamanship had been 
equally successful ; and British naval historians, 
then and since, have been earnest in showing that 
the victories were due to superior weight of metal, 
to the presence of deserters from the British navy 
on board the American ships, and to the accidents 
of naval warfare. Nevertheless, the facts of the 
captures remained the same, and privateers ravaged 
the seas, plundering and burning English ships, 
and causing the most bitter annoyance as well as 
incalculable loss and damage. To the vindictive 
depreciation and abuse of the English writers the 
Americans were not slow to respond, with a joyous 
outburst of national pride and exultation, and a 
mighty flapping of the wings of the American eagle; 
and the poets and song-writers joined in the shrill 
cock-a-doodle-doo of victory. The country was a 
great deal more boastful and self-assertive than it 
has been since it has come to rely on its own 
strength and has known the achievement of the 
great and sobering task of the civil war. The spirit 
of the spread eagle pervaded our national litera- 
ture ; the poets burst into songs, — generally, it 
must be admitted, very bad, — in which they cele- 
brated the naval victories of the day. They in- 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 19 

dulged in mythological flights of the highest kind, 
in which Neptune bestowed a laurel crown upon 
Hull, Amphitrite smiled upon Bainbridge and De- 
catur, and the Tritons and the Nereids joined in 
a chorus of love and admiration for the Ameri- 
can sailor. America, Commerce, and Freedom ap- 
peared as conjoined goddesses, and everybody was 
summoned to fill the bumper and pledge the flow- 
ing bowl, to thank the mighty Jove and invoke 
Bacchus, and do all sorts of things entirely unfa- 
miliar to a people whose principal intoxicating bev- 
erages were Medford rum and Monongahela whis- 
key, and who had not the slightest acquaintance 
with heathen gods and goddesses. It is needless to 
say that none of these songs were written by sailors, 
or were ever sung by them, even if they could have 
been sung by anybody. 

There was, however, better stuff than this in the 
naval songs of the war of 1812. The American 
sailor himself sometimes cleared his cheek of its 
quid, and sang in a clear if somewhat nasal voice 
some of the deeds which he had seen and done. 
Thus there is a great deal of rude vigor in one of 
the verses of a song describing the fight between 
the Constitution and the Guerriere, the first of our 
naval victories, and a very favorite theme : — 

But Jonathan kept cool, 
At the roaring of the Bull. 



20 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

His heart filled with anything but fears ; 

And squirting out his quid, 

As he saw the captain did, 
He cleaned out his mouth for three cheers. 

Another song on the same engagement, entitled 
Halifax Station, begins thus : — 

From Halifax Station a bully there came, 

To take or be taken, called Dacres by name ; 

And who but a Yankee he met on his way ; 

Says the Yankee to him, " Will you stop and take tea ? " 

After giving Dacres's high and mighty address 
to his crew, and Hull's more modest appeal, it 
says : — 

Then we off with our hats and gave him a cheer, 

Swore we 'd stick by brave Hull, while a seaman could 

steer. 
Then at it we went with a mutual delight, 
For to fight and to conquer is a seaman's free right. 

The poet naturally takes the privilege of present- 
ing the confounded Britisher in the most humiliat- 
ing light, and the manner in which Captain Dacres 
signified his surrender is probably more graphic 
than historically correct : — 

Then Dacres looked wild, and then sheathed his sword, 
When he found that his masts had all gone by the board. 
And, dropping astern, cries out to his steward, 
" Come up and be d d ! Fire a gun to leeward ! " 

This battle, fought in the North Atlantic on August 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 21 

2, 1812, between the American frigate Constitution, 
Captain Isaac Hull, and the British frigate Guer- 
riere, Captain James K. Dacres, and one of consum- 
mate seamanship as well as fighting capacity on the 
part of Hull, was the theme of the best and most 
spirited song of the whole war ; one which still keeps 
its place in the forecastle, and, it may be hoped, will 
keep it so long as Uncle Sam has a war-ship afloat. 
It is set to a very lively and emphatic air, called, 
indifferently, The Landlady of France and The 
Bandy-Legged Officer, from the coarsely comical 
words which George Colman the younger had writ- 
ten to it. 

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE GUERRIERE. 

It ofttimes has been told 

That the British sailors bold 
Could flog the tars of France so neat and handy, O. 

And they never found their match 

Till the Yankees did them catch. 
Oh, the Yankee boys for fighting are the dandy, O. 

The Guerriere, a frigate bold, 

On the foaming ocean rolled, 
Commanded by proud Dacres, the grandee, O. 

With choice of British crew, 

As ever rammer drew, 
They could flog the Frenchmen two to one so handy, O. 

When this frigate hove in view, 
Says proud Dacres to his crew, 



22 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

" Come, clear the ship for action, and be handy, 0. 

To the weather-gage, boys, get her," 

And to make his men fight better 
Gave them to drink gunpowder in their brandy, O. 

Then Dacres loudly cries, 

" Make this Yankee ship your prize ! 
You can in thirty minutes, neat and handy, O. 

Thirty-five 's enough, I 'm sure ; 

And if you '11 do it in a score, 
I '11 give you a double dose of brandy, O." 

The British shot flew hot, 

Which the Yankee answered not, 
Till they got within the distance they called handy, O. 

Now says Hull unto his crew, 

" Boys, let 's see what we can do. 
If we take this boasting Briton, we 're the dandy, O." 

The first broadside we poured 

Carried their mainmast by the board, 
Which made the lofty frigate look abandoned, O. 

Then Dacres shook his head, 

And to his officers he said, 
" Lord ! I did n't think these Yankees were so handy, 0. 

Our second told so well 

That their fore and mizzen fell, 
Which doused the royal ensign so handy, O. 

"By George," says he, " we 're done ! " 

And he fired a lee gun, 
While the Yankees struck up Yankee doodle dandy, O. 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 23 

Then Dacres came on board 

To deliver up his sword. 
Loath was he to part with it, it was so handy, O. 

"O, keep your sword," says Hull, 

" For it only makes you dull. - 
So cheer up ; let us take a little brandy, O." 

Come, fill your glasses full, 

And we '11 drink to Captain Hull, 
And so merrily will push about the brandy, O. 

John Bull may toast his fill, 

Let the world say what it will, 
But the Yankee boys for fighting are the dandy, O. 

The English celebrated their one signal victory 
of the war — the capture of the Chesapeake by 
the Shannon, off Boston Light, a year later — by 
a parody of this song, of a decidedly inferior qual- 
ity. 

One of the most notable events of the war was 
the cruise of the Essex, Captain David Porter, in 
the South Pacific, in 1813 and 1814. She did an 
immense amount of damage to the British whale- 
men, and the British ships Cherub and Phoebe 
were sent to capture her. After a rencontre in 
the harbor of Valparaiso, in which the captain of 
the Phoebe, taken at a disadvantage, protested his 
purpose to respect the neutrality of the port, and 
a challenge from which the British ships ran away, 
the Essex was caught disabled by a squall, chased 
into a harbor near Valparaiso, and captured after a 



24 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

tremendous engagement, in which the calibre of the 
British guns gave them every advantage, and in 
which the neutrality of the port was not taken into 
account. There was a poet on board the Essex, 
and he produced a long ballad describing the cruise 
and the retreat of the British ships after the chal- 
lenge ; but whether he perished in the later fight, 
or had no heart to add it to his verses, is not 
known. Among the crew of the Essex who did 
survive the fight was Midshipman David Gr. Earra- 
gut, who lived to achieve the greatest naval renown 
since that of Nelson, and be the theme of The Bay 
Fight, the noblest sea poem yet written. 

The ballad of the Essex is entitled " A Pleasant 
New Song. Chanted by Nathan Whiting (through 
his nose) for the amusement of the galley slaves 
on board the Phoebe, who are allowed to sing no- 
thing but psalms." After describing the begin- 
ning of the trouble caused by " John Bull's taking 
our ships and kidnaping our true sailors," and the 
capture of British vessels in the first year of the 
war, the ballad takes up the cruise of the Essex. 

The saucy Essex, she sailed out 

To see what she could do. 
Her captain is f roui Yankee land, 

And so are all her crew. 

Away she sailed, so gay and trim, 
Down to the Galapagos, 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 25 

And toted all the terrapins, 

And nabbed the slippery whalers, 

And where d' ye think we next did go ? 

Why, down to the Marquesas. 
And there we buried underground 

Some thousand golden pieces. 

Then sailed about the ocean wide, 

Sinking, burning, taking, 
Filling pockets, spilling oil, 

While Johnny's heart was aching. 

The ballad then describes the arrival of the Phoebe 
and Cherub and the rencontre in Valparaiso Bay, 
the challenge and the flight of the Phoebe, in verses 
which have a great deal of rude vigor. 

At last John Bull quite sulky grew, 

And called us traitors all, 
And swore he 'd fight our gallant crew, 

Paddies and Scots and all. 

Then out he went in desperate rage, 

Swearing, as sure as day, 
He 'd starve us all or dare us out 

Of Valparaiso Bay. 

Then out he sailed in gallant trim, 

As if he thought to fright us, 
Run up his flag and fired a gun 

To say that he would fight us. 

Our cables cut, we put to sea, 
And ran down on his quarter, 



26 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

And Johnny clapped his helm hard up, 
And we went following after. 

In haste to join the Cherub he 

Soon bent his scurvy way, 
While we returned in merry glee 

To Valaparaiso Bay. 

And let them go. To meet the foe 

We '11 take no farther trouble, 
Since all the world must fairly know 

They '11 only fight us double. 

Ne'er mind, my lads, let 's drink and sing, 

" Free trade and sailors' rights." 
May liquor never fail the lad 
Who for his country fights. 

Huzza, my lads, let 's drink and sing, 
And toast them as they run : 
" Here 's to the sailors and their king 
Who '11 fight us two to one." 

There were other exploits of American ships 
told in verse, among them the gallant repulse, by 
the crew of the privateer General Armstrong, Cap- 
tain Samuel C. Reid, in the Harbor of Fayal, of 
the boats of three British men-of-war, which was 
the subject of a forecastle ballad, but none of this 
memorial verse reached the level of poetry. The 
battles of Lake Erie and Lake Champlain also had 
their numerous laureates ; and the raid of Admiral 
Cockburn and the troops upon Baltimore was the 



AMEBICAN SEA SONGS. 27 

subject of a song, the opening lines of which have 
a vigor and strong rhythm not maintained through- 
out. 

Old Ross, Cochrane, and Cockburn too, 

And many a bloody villain more, 
Swore with their bloody, savage crew 

That they would plunder Baltimore. 

The naval service during the civil war did not 
produce any songs that achieved popularity in 
comparison with that won by the songs of land 
service, like John Brown's Body, The Year of 
Jubilo, and Marching through Georgia, and in 
fact was singularly deficient in poetry, with the 
remarkable exception of the productions of Mr. 
Henry Howard Brownell. There were few single- 
ship engagements except the fight between the 
Monitor and the Merrimac, and the Kearsarge and 
the Alabama, and the blockading service was not 
calculated to inspire the martial muse. 

The two great naval achievements of the war 
were the capture of New Orleans and of the forts 
in Mobile Bay by the fleets under Farragut ; and 
these were celebrated in poetry worthy of them — 
and no more can be said — by Henry Howard 
Brownell, who witnessed the second from the deck 
of Admiral Farragut's flagship. The fire, spirit, 
and grand fighting elan of The Bay Fight have 
never been surpassed in English poetry, and the 



28 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

accuracy of its pictures is as notable as their vigor. 
But these are poems, and not songs, and there is 
nothing in the naval songs of the civil war which 
will compare with those of the war of 1812. It 
was rather past the time for the genuine forecastle 
ballad, and none of the land poets hit the true 
vein, as Buchanan Read, Stedman, and others did 
when commemorating military exploits. 

There was one other field of American seaman- 
ship, full of romance and excitement, which shoidd 
have produced some worthy poetry and song, and 
that was the whaling service before the days of 
iron steamers and bomb lances. The chase of the 
gigantic cetacean in the lonely solitude of the 
Arctic and Indian oceans, the fights in frail boats 
with the maddened monster and all the perils of 
sea and storm, the visits to the palmy islands in 
the Southern Sea and the frozen solitude of the 
Arctic, were full of the materials of poetry. The 
long watches of the monotonous cruising during 
the four years' voyage gave plenty of time for any 
occupation, whether it was carving whales' teeth 
or making verses ; and there were many bright 
spirits, attracted by the adventure of whaling, who 
could have made a literary use of their opportu- 
nity. The novels of Herman Melville, some of the 
strongest and most original in our literature, have 
given the romance of the South Sea islands as 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 29 

they appeared to the adventurer of that day ; and 
in Moby Dick, or The White Whale, he has 
shown both the prose and the poetry of a whaling 
cruise with singular power, although with some 
touch of extravagance at the end. The whaling 
songs are, however, not very abundant, nor, it 
must be confessed, of a high standard of quality. 
To this there is one remarkable exception, which 
appears to be wholly unknown in American litera- 
ture, although it has been in print. It is entitled 
a " Brand Fire New Whaling Song Right from the 
Pacific Ocean. Tune, Maggy Lander. By a 
Foremast Hand," and was printed in a little five- 
cent pamphlet, by E. B. Miller, in New Bedford, 
in 1831. It does not seem to have come under 
the eye of any critic who could appreciate its spirit 
and faithfulness, and no mention is made of it in 
any of the collections of American poetry. It is 
extremely doubtful if the author received enough 
from its sale to repay him for the investment of a 
portion of his " lay " in printing it, and his name 
is utterly lost in his modest pseudonym of " Fore- 
mast Hand ; " so that he obtained neither fame 
nor fortune from his epic. The poem, which is too 
long for entire quotation, was unquestionably the 
work of a sailor on a whaling ship, and probably, 
as he says, of a foremast hand. It lacks some of 
the finish of professional literature,- as shown in 



30 AMEBICAN SEA SONGS. 

the ruggedness of some of its rhymes, and the vig- 
orous compulsion of the rules of grammar and 
syntax, when necessary, although the author was 
evidently of higher education than would belong 
to one in his position, and its jigging measure be- 
comes tiresome ; but it is of very great spirit and 
vigor, as well as fidelity to its theme, and by no 
means deserves to have fallen so entirely into 
oblivion. Indeed, it seems to me to be quite as 
good as, and a great deal more original than, any 
American poetry which had appeared up to that 
time. The song has for its subject the chase and 
capture of a whale in the North Pacific, and re- 
lates the course of events from the time of the first 
sighting of " white water " on the horizon by the 
lookouts to that when the monster, stabbed to 
death by the keen lances, rolls "fins out" in the 
bloody water, amid the hurrahs of the excited 
boats' crews. All the details of this gvande chasse 
are given with wonderful vigor, as well as faithful- 
ness, and the historian of the whale fishery will 
find it as accurate as a log-book. Perhaps the ac- 
count of the chase by the boats and the harpooning 
will give as good an idea of the force and spirit of 
the poem as any part of it ; and, in reference to the 
emphasis of the language, it may be remembered 
that mates of whaling ships in pursuit of an eight- 
hundred-barrel whale had a good deal of energy 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 31 

and excitement to relieve. The boats have been 
lowered, and are darting toward the unsuspecting 
whale with all the speed of ashen oars and vig- 
orous muscle, while their commanders objurgate 
and stimulate the crews, as the poet says, "judi- 
ciously." 

" Pull, men, for, lo, see there they blow ! 
They 're going slow as night, too. 
Pull, pull, you clogs ! they lie like logs, — 
Thank Heaven they 're headed right, too." 



" The chance is ours ! " the mate now roars. 

" Spring, spring, nor have it said, men, 
That we could miss a chance like this 

To take them head and head, men. 
There 's that old sog, he 's like a log. 

Spring, lads, and show your mettle ; 
Strain every oar ; let 's strike before 

He 's gallied, mill, or settle." 

And so it is, the chance is his. 

The others peak their oars now. 
From his strained eyes the lightning flies, 

And lion-like he roars now. 
" Pull, pull, my lads ! why don't you pull ? 

For God's sake, pull away, men ! 
Hell's blazes ! pull but three strokes more, 

And we have won the day, men ! 

" Stand up there, forward — pull the rest — 
Hold water — give it to her ! 



32 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

Stern all, stern all — God damn it, heave 

Your other iron through her ! 
We 're fast, we 're fast — stern out her way ! 

Here, let me come ahead, men. 
There, peak your oars — wet — line — wet — line — 

Why, bloody zounds, you 're dead, men ! " 

The rush of the whale towing the boat, his 
sounding to the uttermost length of the line, his 
reappearance, the lancing, the mad dash at the 
boats, and the death flurry are all described with 
great vividness, but there is room only for the 
verses in which the monster comes up from his 
long dive, and obliges the poet to appeal to the 
enemy of sea songs, the steam boiler : — 

Till from the deep, with mighty leap, 

Full length the monster breaches, — 
So strongly sped, his scarred gray head 

High as our topmast reaches ; 
And, like a rock, with startling shock, 

From mountain height descending, 
Down thunders he upon the sea, 

Ocean with ether blending. 

And, hark ! once more that lengthened roar, 

As from his spout-hole gushing, 
His breath, long spent, now finds a vent, 

Like steam from boiler rushing. 

It does not seem that a poet who could write so 
vividly and forcefully as this ought to be without 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 38 

a place in American literature, even if there were 
no other interest in his work. 

There is another whaling song, entitled The 
Coast of Peru, and undoubtedly the work of a 
forecastle poet, which is worth preserving, despite 
its homeliness, for its genuine flavor, and as a relic 
of the old days before steam whalers and bomb 
lances took so much of the romance out of the 
fishery. 

THE COAST OF PEEU. 

Come, all ye bold sailors, 

Who sail 'round Cape Horn, 
Come, all the bold whalers, 

Who cruise 'round for sperm. 
The Captain has told us, 

And I hope 't will prove true 
That there 's plenty of sperm whales 

Off the coast of Peru. 

The first whale we saw 

Near the close of the day. 
Our Captain came on deck, 

And thus he did say : 
" Now all my bold sailors, 

Pray be of good glee, 
For we '11 see him in the morning, 

P'raps under our lee." 

It was early next morning, 

Just as the sun rose, 
The man at the mast-head 

Called out, " There she blows ! " 



34 AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 

" Whereaway ? " cried our Captain, 
As he sprang up aloft. 

" Three points on our lee bow, 
And scarce two miles off." 

" Now trace up your yards, boys, 

We '11 fasten anear. 
Get your lines in your boats, 

See your box lines all clear ; 
Haul back the main yard, boys, 

Stand by, each boat's crew, 
Lower away, lower away, 

My brave fellows, do." 

" Now, bend to your oars, boys, 

Just make the boat fly, 
But whatever you do, boys, 

Keep clear from his eye." 
The first mate soon struck, 

And the whale he went down, 
While the old man pulled up, 

And stood by to bend on. 

But the whale soon arose ; 

To the windward he lay. 
We hauled up 'longside, 

And he showed us fair play. 
We caused him to vomit, 

Thick blood for to spout, 
And in less than ten minutes 

We rolled him " fin out." 

We towed him alongside 
With many a shout, 



AMERICAN SEA SONGS. 35 

That day cut him in, 

And began to boil out. 
Oh, now he 's all boiled out 

And stowed down below, 
We 're waiting to hear 'em, 

Sing out, " There she blows ! " 

It is extremely doubtful if the Dago sailors and 
foreign 'longshoremen, who now make such a large 
portion of the crews of the Arctic steam whalers, 
are capable of even such rude verse as this, and 
the poetry of the whale fishery is now as extinct as 
the glory of Nantucket and the sea flavor of New 
Bedford. Like some greater things it may be 
regretted, but cannot be recovered. 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Of collections and criticisms of the songs and 
poetry of the civil war in this country there is 
no lack. Newspaper files and popular song-books 
have been ransacked, as well as more pretentious 
volumes, and whatever possessed a modicum of 
what is termed " poetic merit " has been gathered 
with pious care. The standard in most cases has, 
naturally enough, been that of " polite literature," 
that of which the, writers were persons of education, 
and -who endeavored to express with more or less 
force a dominant sentiment in logical as well as 
grammatical form, and to embody their meaning in 
intelligent words. If popular songs, which did not 
fulfil these conditions, have been included, it has 
usually been with an apology for their uncouthness, 
or a contemptuous reference to their banality, and 
an intimation that they were forced into the pages 
of the collection, or upon the attention of the 
critic, because they could not be ignored in any 
representative collection of the poetry of the war. 
Nevertheless, it may be doubted if these uncouth 
rhymes, without sense or consecutive meaning, like 
Dixie's Land and John Brown's Body, or the 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 37 

cheap sentimentality of Just before the Battle, 
Mother, and When this Cruel War is over, do not 
have something of the indefinable fascination on 
the printed page which they had to the ears of the 
men who sung them, and do not take a stronger 
hold upon the mind than the much more elegant 
and refined verses by which they are surrounded. 
Something of this may be due to the memory of 
those who heard them, and in whose minds they 
were the voice of the war, as the flags, the arms, 
and the uniforms were its visible insignia, but this 
does not entirely account for their fascination and 
permanence. There was something about them 
which endowed them with vital life, which gave 
them a hold upon every tongue and upon every 
heart, a quality distinct from obvious mean- 
ing, to say nothing of literary excellence, and 
which can only be described as the singing ele- 
ment. It was to accomplish this purpose, to re- 
lieve the heart through the lungs, without reference 
to the mind, to emphasize and lighten the buoyant 
or weary march, and give voice to the pervading 
impulse, which kept these songs alive and made 
them a practical part of the war, as the sailor's 
" shanties " were a part of the life of the sea, 
and the negro choruses of the life of the planta- 
tion. This fascination may fade when the civil war 
becomes a matter of distant history, and John 



38 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Brown's Body be no more than a set of unmean- 
ing jingles to future generations, as Lillibullero, 
which " sung King James out of three kingdoms," 
is to our own ; but with their death will come a 
loss of a vital element of the war, as representing its 
living and human sentiment, and history will miss 
its function if it exclude them. How vital they 
were at the time may be seen from the fact that 
the attempts to supersede the unmeaning rhymes 
by words of substance and definite poetry had no 
effect, so far as their popular use was concerned, 
even when this was done with such magnificent 
success as in Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's Battle 
Hymn of the Republic, or General Albert Pike's 
powerful lines to Dixie. The people and the sol- 
diers clung to the old choruses, and passed by with 
cold respect or indifference the deliberate and 
purely literary appeals to their feelings. There is, 
perhaps, a reason for this, which may be accounted 
for under the canons of literary criticism. A 
song is something different from a poem, and in- 
cludes a dominant appeal to the ear, which may be 
even obstructed by elaborate meaning, and the sim- 
ple and taking air is the essential thing. It is not 
always the case that a popular or national song 
is meaningless, as is shown in the Marseillaise 
and Der Wacht am Rhein ; and, in our own 
war, Mr. James R. Randall's My Maryland was as 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 39 

popular in the Southern army as a song as it is 
vigorous and spirited as a piece of pure literature. 
But as a whole, songs which have been sung by 
large bodies of men, under stress of high excite- 
ment, have depended more upon their sound than 
their meaning for their vogue, and this would 
doubtless apply to the chants of the Crusaders as 
to the choruses of the Northern and Southern 
soldiers during the civil war. God save the King 
does not compare with Ye Mariners of England 
in any element of poetry, yet the one is always 
sung and the latter never ; and Marching through 
Georgia depends upon its air rather than its com- 
monplace words for its hold upon the martial 
heart. There was some good poetry written dur- 
ing the late civil war, although not much ; and in 
the collections, as I have said, it is doubtful if 
the respectable verses, in which the incidents and 
feelings of the war were expressed with deliberate 
art, have the vitality, as they have not now the 
effect, of the rude rhymes and commonplace sen- 
timentality of those songs which took hold of the 
hearts of the people, and were the living voices of 
the war. Too often they had the contortions of 
patriotism without its inspiration, and were forci- 
ble-feeble in appeal, or, when they attempted to 
interpret the spirit of battle, rang false to the 
real feeling and knowledge of the soldier. To 



40 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

this there were brilliant exceptions, like Mr. Gib- 
bons's We are coming, Father Abraham, Mr. 
Henry Howard Brownell's naval poems, and 
Bead's Sheridan's Kide, but as a whole it must 
be confessed that the polite poetry of the civil 
war is rather dreary reading. 

There was an immense amount of song-writing as 
well as of song-singing during the war, and under 
the stress of excitement and the gathering together 
of immense bodies of young and exuberant spirits 
the enthusiasm inevitably found a vent through the 
lungs. The illiterate poets were as busy as those 
of higher education ; and those who did not seek 
their public through the pages of the fashionable 
magazine, or even the poet's corner of the country 
newspaper, but through the badly printed sheet of 
the penny street ballad, or through the mouth of 
the negro minstrel, contributed almost as largely 
to the poetry of the war as their brothers. Dime 
song-books containing a curious admixture of the 
common and the polite, the appropriate and the in- 
congruous, were innumerable, and the poetry which 
is below literary criticism was equal in bulk to that 
which is within its scope. Actual soldiers and sail- 
ors also sometimes wrote of their battles and expe- 
riences, or expressed their feelings in more or less 
finished verse, and these found their way into print 
either in the ballad sheet or the newspaper. Most 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 41 

of those which were good in themselves, from their 
native force and vigor or from their power as songs, 
have been preserved, but there is an immense 
amount of this uncollected and unedited verse which 
has a very great value as illustrating the sentiments 
and condition of the people, the waves of popular 
feeling during various phases of the war, the im- 
pressions of notable incidents and the estimates of 
prominent personages, and which tell, oftentimes 
more than the leading articles in the newspapers, 
how the common people were affected by the tre- 
mendous struggle. They have the interest, if no 
other, of the relics of arms and uniforms, and the 
tokens of the familiar life of a bygone age, and will 
one day be as valuable to the historian as the bal- 
lads of the civil war in England, which have been 
collected with so much care. In modern times and 
in civilized societies, the newspaper has taken 
the place of the street ballad as the record of his- 
torical events and the expression of political feeling, 
and Ireland is almost the only country where it 
now lingers in any quantity and force ; but during 
such times of popular excitement, and the occur- 
rence of great events involving the most intimate 
interests of the people, as during the civil war, the 
popular ballads resumed something of their former 
value as the expressions of popular feeling. It 
would be a mistake to omit from consideration even 



42 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

those which were provided as a matter of profes- 
sional business by the minstrels of the popular 
stage, who reflected the pervading sentiments of the 
time, and colored their rude comedy and cheap 
pathos with the thoughts and feelings aroused by 
the war. 

Thousands of these street songs were issued, to 
have their temporary vogue and disappear. The 
principal publisher of the penny sheets was H. de 
Marsan, 34 Chatham Street, New York, and he ap- 
pears to have had almost a monopoly of the trade. 
They were printed on coarse paper, with an emble- 
matic border in colors representing the American 
flag, and with a soldier and sailor under arms. 
Some of the more successful songs were copyrighted 
and published with their music, but this appears 
to have made little difference to the enterprising 
Chatham Street publisher, for he included almost 
everything that was singable, old Kevolutionary 
ballads, English naval songs, and some of the more 
finished American poems of the war, as well as Ethi- 
opian melodies, and ballads obviously of original 
contribution. It would be interesting to know 
whether he kept a staff of poets, like Jemmy Cat- 
nach of Seven Dials, or whether, as is most proba- 
ble, he simply took what he could find, and con- 
ferred the honors of print, without remuneration, 
upon voluntary contributors. The most numerous 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAB. 43 

contributors who bear the stamp of originality 
naturally came from the Irish element in New York, 
who were familiar with the street ballad at home, 
and reproduced its form and sentiment for a similar 
audience. There are dozens of ballads relating to 
the exploits of the Sixty-Ninth Regiment, an Irish 
organization in the New York State Guard, of which 
Michael Corcoran, an ex-member of the Irish con- 
stabulary, was colonel, and Thomas Francis Mea- 
gher, the Irish revolutionist, and afterward a brig- 
adier-general of volunteers, a captain. The regi- 
ment took part in the battle of Bull Run, during 
which Colonel Corcoran was taken prisoner and 
carried South. The bards were instantly inspired 
to sing the praises of the regiment and its comman- 
der, and ballads were written exactly reproducing 
the style and language of the Irish " Come, all 
yez," as thus : — 

Come, all ye Gallant Heroes, along with me combine ; 
I '11 sing to you a ditty about the Glorious Sixty-Ninth. 
They are a band of Brothers, from Ireland they came ; 
They had a bold Commander, Michael Corcoran was his 
name. 

In one or two of them there is an improvement 
on this very primitive verse, gleams of humor and 
ebullitions of vigorous spirit. A song entitled The 
Jolly Sixty-Ninth has a rollicking rhythm and rude 
humor, of which the following is a specimen : — 



44 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

It happened one fine day, 

Down by the raj in say, 
Quite convenient to the boilin' Gulf of Mexico, 

That some chaps hauled down our flag, 

And it through the dust did drag, 
Swearin' it should never float on Fort Sumpter, O. 

The author of a song entitled Freedom's Guide 
had a force and vigor which, with a little more 
polish and form, would have entitled him to a place 
in polite literature, and the real singable quality, 
which was, perhaps, of more importance : — 

FREEDOM'S GUIDE. 

Our country now is great and free, 
And this forever it shall be. 

We know the way — we know the way. 
Though Southern foes may gather here, 
We will protect what we hold dear. 
We know the way. 

Chorus. We know the way — we know the way. 
Through Baltimore, hooray. 
For our guide is Freedom's banner. 

Hooray, hooray. 
The way is through Baltimore. 

The South shall see that we are true, 
And that we know a thing or two. 

We know the way — we know the way. 
As Yankee boys we are at hand, 
Our countless throngs shall fill the land. 
We know the way. 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR, 45 

From east to west, from south to north, 
We '11 send our mighty legions forth. 

We know the way — we know the way. 
The freedom that our fathers won 
Shall be defended by each son. 
We know the way. 

Then shout, then shout o'er hill and plain, 
We will our country's rights maintain. 

We know the way — we know the way. 
We will always guard it with our might, 
And keep steadfast in the right. 
We know the way. 

Old Jeff has now begun to lag, 

He knows that we '11 stand by the flag. 

We know the way — we know the way. 
With Scott to guide us in the right, 
We '11 show them how the Sixty-Ninth can fight. 
We know the way. 

An organization almost equally popular with the 
New York ballad singers, in the early days of the 
war, was the " Fire Zouaves," recruited among the 
firemen of the metropolis, and which was expected 
to perform wonderful feats of daring and energy, 
from the character of its material. Its leader, 
Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth, was killed by the 
landlord of a hotel in Alexandria, Va., while haul- 
ing down the rebel flag from the roof, and his 
death created a deep sensation from its dramatic 



46 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

character, and from the fact that it was among the 
earliest in the war. The elegies upon his death 
were numerous, as well as those in praise of the 
regiment itself. One of the latter, by Archibald 
Scott, whose name, contrary to the usual custom, 
was prefixed to the ballad, had a good deal of rude 
vigor, of which the following is a specimen : — 

Shall ugly plugs of Baltimore, 
Who come out with stones and staves, 
Get leave our patriots' blood to pour, 
And drive our soldiers from their shore ? 
No, no ! by Hell, in flames shall roar 
Their city first by York Zouaves ! 

Another phase of life in the cities, from that of 
the enthusiasm of the young men in marching to 
the war and the fervent appeals for enlistment, was 
that of the feelings of the women whose sons and 
husbands left their workshops to join the army. 
The grief was as bitter and the patriotism as sin- 
cere among the inmates of the crowded tenement 
houses and the narrow and barren homes of the 
families of the workingmen of New York as among 
their sisters in the farmhouses in the country, 
whose surroundings better lent themselves to the 
illumination of poetry, and it cost as much to put 
down the tin pail of the city laborer as for the 
farmer to 

Lay down the axe, fling by the spade, 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 47 

and even more in pinching poverty and lack of 
resource. But the griefs and sacrifices of these 
women of the city tenement and noisome alley 
have found no place in the genteel poetry of the 
war, and have only been expressed in the rude 
verse of the street ballad. Says one of them : — 

It was in the month of April, 

As I walked out one day, 
I met a woman weeping 

As I walked down Broadway. 
She was weeping for her Johnny, 

Her dear and only son, 
Who joined the Northern army 

To fight in Washington. 
Johnny ! I gave you a schooling 

I gave you a trade likewise, 
And when you joined the Volunteers, 

You know 'twas my advice." 

The New York ballad writers were not entirely 
confined to the English language, the large foreign 
population furnishing recruits of all nations. There 
is not, so far as I have seen, any original German 
song devoted to the Union cause, but The Red, 
White, and Blue, and other patriotic songs, were 
published in German text; and of Germanized- 
English songs, most if not all the product of va- 
riety theatre performers, there were a great many, 
including the extremely popular I 'm going to fight 
mit Siegel. 



48 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Ven I comes from de Deutsche Countree, 

I vorks somedimes at baking. 
Den I keeps a lager bier saloon, 

And den I goes shoemaking. 
But now I vas a sojer man 

To save the Yankee eagle, 
To Schlauch dem dam Southern folks, 

I 'm going to fight mit Siegel. 

But this was no more representative of German 
sentiments than the " Whack-row-de-do w " Pats of 
the stage were of the Irish ; and the German sol- 
diers, when they sang in the vernacular, enlivened 
their foreign patriotism with the songs of the 
Fatherland. There was at least one French poet 
who appealed to his countrymen in their own lan- 
guage to rally to the cause of the Union. His pro- 
duction was as follows : — 

VENGEONS LA PATRIE. 

HYMNE PATRIOTIQUE, PAR GUSTAVE DIME, OUVRIER-ESTAM- 
PEUR: AIR, " GLOIRE AUX MARTYRS VICTORIAUX." 

APPEL AUX ARMES. 

Debout fils de l'Union 

Pour venges l'infamie 
Faite a la nation, 

Pour venger la Patrie, 

La Constitution ! 

A bas Rebellion ! 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 49 

Debout, debout Americains, 
Debout les armes a main. 



L'OUTRAGE. 

De Baltimore a Charleston, 

De Bickmont a Montgomery, 
Le grand drapeau de Washington 

Partout il fnt souillie, fle'tri, 
Du Fort Sumpter vengeons l'outrage 

Et en la sol de Virginie 
Sachions montrer notre courage 

En digne fils de la Patrie. 

l'assassinat. 
Le Sud in horrible furie 

Du POIGNARD DE LA TRAHISON 

Percant le coaur de la Patrie, 
Proclame a la Secession. 

Mais le President he'roique 
Et l'Autorite', le Senat, 

Sauront sauver la Republique 
Et cet infame Assassinat. 

LE TRIOMPHE. 

Gloire k ton nom, libre Ame'rique, 

Gloire a tes vaillant de'fenseurs 
lis sauveront la Rdpublique, 

Terrasseront tes oppresseurs. 
lis volent tous a la victoire, 

Pour l'Union des Etats Unis. 
lis reviendront couverts de gloire 

Et les traitres Seront Punis. 



50 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAB. 

The " ouvrier-estampeur " was sufficiently ener- 
getic, but his song never became the Franco- Amer- 
ican Marseillaise. 

As the war dragged its slow length along, de- 
manding greater and greater sacrifices, and with 
its days of repulse and defeat for the Union armies, 
the feeling of universal enthusiasm gave way to 
discouragement, and there were not wanting in 
New York, among its heterogeneous population, 
elements of bitterness which culminated in the 
deadly and shameful outbreak of the draft riots. 
This feeling manifested itself in the street ballads, 
not so conspicuously as the previous enthusiasm, 
but enough to have attracted the attention of those 
who were watching the signs of popular feeling. 
" Copperheadism " had its bards as well as loyalty, 
although they were much fewer in number, and 
they cannot be omitted in an account of the folk- 
songs of the civil war. A rude jingle entitled 
Johnny, fill up the Bowl, gave the popular ex- 
pression to this feeling : — 

Abram Lincoln, what yer 'bout ? 

Hurrah, hurrah. 
Stop this war, for it 's played out, 

Hurrah, hurrah. 

Abram Lincoln, what yer 'bout ? 
Stop this war, for it 's played out. 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 51 

We '11 all drink stone-blind, 
Johnny fill up the bowl. 

The pages of the dime song-books at this time 
contained a number of songs in opposition to the 
draft, expressing hatred to the negro, and a de- 
mand for the stoppage of the war, of which the 
following is an example : — 

THE BEAUTIES OF CONSCRIPTION. 

And this the " people's sovereignty," 

Before a despot humbled, 
Lies in the dust 'neath power unjust, 
With crown and sceptre crumbled. 
Their brows distained — like felons chained 

To negroes called "their betters," 
Their whinings drowned in " Old John Brown," 
Poor sovereigns wearing fetters. 
Hurrah for the Conscription, 

American Conscription ! 
Well have they cashed old Lincoln's drafts, 
Hurrah for the Conscription ! 

Some think the hideous spectacle 

Should move the heart to sadness, 
That fetters ought — oh silly thought ! — 

Sting freemen's hearts to madness. 
When has the stock of Plymouth rock 

Been melted to compunction ? 
As for Provos, the wide world knows 

That chaining is their function. 
Hurrah for the Conscription, 
American Conscription, 



52 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

And for the stock of Plymouth rock, 
Whence sprung this new Conscription ! 

What matter if you 're sandwiched in 

A host of sable fellows, 
Well flavored men, your kith and kin, 

As Abe and Sumner tell us ? 
Is not the war — this murder — for 

The negro, nolens volens ? 
For every three now killed of ye 
There 's just a negro stolen. 
And then ye have Conscription, 

American Conscription, 
Your blood must flow for this, you know. 
Hurrah for the Conscription ! 

The songs written by the soldiers and sailors 
themselves, descriptive of their engagements, or 
incidents of camp and march, or expressing their 
feelings, were not many, either in folk-ballads or 
finished poetry. Major J. W. De Forrest's pow- 
erful verses, In Louisiana, are almost the only 
specimen of the latter, and there are but few of 
the ruder ballads. It may have been because the 
soldiers and sailors were too much occupied, and 
that the life in camp and on shipboard was not 
favorable to poetical reverie, although there were 
many hours on picket or watch which might have 
been thus employed ; but the fact remains that 
there was more carving of bone rings than of 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 53 

verses, and more singing than writing in the army 
and navy. There was not an absolute dearth, 
however, and the soldiers and sailors sometimes 
told their own stories or expressed their own feel- 
ings in verse. One of the best of these was writ- 
ten during the early days of the war by H. Mil- 
lard, a member of Company A, Seventy-first 
Eegiment, concerning the march from Annapolis 
to the Junction, and has the genuine flavor of 
soldiership as well as a fine spirit of camarade- 
rie. It is entitled Only Nine Miles to the Junc- 
tion : — 

The Rhode Island boys were posted along 

On the road from Annapolis station, 
As the Seventy-first Regiment, one thousand strong, 

Went on in defense of the nation. 
We 'd been marching all day in the sun's scorching ray, 

With two biscuits each as a ration, 
When we asked Gov. Sprague to show us the way, 
And " How many miles to the Junction ? " 
How many miles — how many miles, 

And how many miles to the Junction ; 
When we asked Gov. Sprague to show us the way, 
And " How many miles to the Junction ? " 

The Rhode Island boys cheered us on out of sight, 

After giving the following injunction : 
" Just keep up your courage, you '11 come out all right, 

For it 's only nine miles to the Junction." 
They gave us hot coffee, a grasp of the hand, 

Which cheered and refreshed our exhaustion ; 



54 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAB. 

We reached in six hours the long-promised land, 
For 't was only nine miles to the Junction. 

There were not many attempts to describe the 
battles in which the soldiers took part, and they 
were left to the poets, who did not see them, and 
had to depend, not very successfully, upon their 
imagination. There was, however, a ballad of the 
Seven Days' Fight before Richmond, evidently 
written by a soldier, and of some force and vigor. 
It begins : — 

Away down in old Virginny many months ago, 
McClellan made a movement and made it very slow. 
The Rebel Generals found it out and pitched into our rear ; 
They caught the very devil, for they found old Kearney 
there. 

In the old Virginny low-lands, low-lands, 
The old Virginny low-lands, low. 

The bard details the fights as though they were a 
succession of Union victories, and concludes with 
a defense of General McClellan : — 

Now all you politicians, a word I have for you, 
Just let our little Mac alone, for he is tried and true ; 
For you have found out lately that he is our only hope, 
For twice he saved the Capitol, likewise McDowell and 
Pope. 

The enthusiasm aroused by General McClellan 
among the rank and file of the Army of the Poto- 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 55 

mac had no counterpart in regard to any other 
commander, was proof against failure and defeat, 
and lingered, to a certain extent, even to the close 
of the war. His removal caused a great deal of 
indignation, and called out a good many protests 
and appeals for his restoration. A song, Give us 
back our old Commander, was a good deal sung at 
the time : — 

Give us back our old Commander, 
Little Mac, the people's pride ; 
Let the army and the nation 
In their choice be satisfied. 
With McClellan as our leader. 
Let us strike the blow anew ; 
Give us back our old Commander, 
He will see the battle through. 
Give us back our old Commander, 
Let him manage, let him plan ; 
With McClellan as our leader, 
We can wish no better man. 

The very rollicking and nonsensical chorus of 
Bummers, come and meet Us, belongs to this pe- 
riod, and was almost as popular as John Brown's 
Body, fulfilling amply and simply the conditions 
for relieving the lungs. Like the sailors' " shan- 
ties " and the plantation choruses, it was capable 
of indefinite extension and improvisation. The fol- 
lowing is a specimen of its construction : — 



56 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

McClellan is our leader, we 've had our last retreat, 
McClellan is our leader, we 've had our last retreat, 
McClellan is our leader, we 've had our last retreat, 
We '11 now go marching on. 

Say, brothers, will you meet us, 

Say, brothers, will you meet us, 

Say, brothers, will you meet us, 

As we go marching on ? 

The girls we left behind us, boys, our sweethearts in the 

North, 
The girls we left behind us, boys, our sweethearts in the 

North, 
The girls we left behind us, boys, our sweethearts in the 

North, 

Smile on us as we march. 

Oh sweethearts, don't forget us, 
Oh sweethearts, don't forget us, 
Oh sweethearts, don't forget us, 

We '11 soon come marching home. 

A seaman on board the Vandalia, one of the 
ships engaged in the capture of Port Royal, wrote 
a description of the engagement, which has consid- 
erable of the light of battle in it. It is entitled : — 

THE PORT ROYAL DANCE. 

Behold our glorious banner floats gayly in the air, 
But four hours hence base traitors swore we could not plant 
it there ; 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 57 

But brave Dupont he led us on to fight the vaunting foe, 
And soon the rebel standard was in the dust laid low. 
Whack row de dow, 

How are you, old Port Royal ? 
Whack row de dow, 
How are you, Secesh ? 

When we were seen advancing they laughed with foolish pride, 
And said that soon our Northern fleet they 'd sink beneath 

the tide ; 
And with their guns trained carefully they waited our advance, 
And the gallant Wabash soon struck up the music of the 

dance. 

The Susquehanna next in line delivered her broadside, 
With deadly aim each shot was sent and well each gun was 

plied ; 
And still our gallant ships advanced, and each one, as she 



Poured in her deadly messengers, and the foe fell thick and 
fast. 

Each ship advanced in order, each captain wore a smile, 
Until the famed Vandalia brought up the rear in style, 
And as our guns were shortest we balanced to the right, 
And brought us to the enemy the closest in the fight. 

Then round the room (Port Royal bay) we took a Highland 

Fling, 
And showed them in Fort Walker what loud music we could 

sing. 
And then we poured in our broadsides that brought their 

courage low, 
And o'er the rebel batteries soon our Union flag did flow. 



58 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAB. 

Three cheers for gallant Haggerty, he led us safely through ; 
And three for our loved Whiting, he is the real true blue. 
Success to every officer who fought with us that day ; 
Together may we pass unscathed through many a gallant 
fray. 

A health to every gallant tar who did his duty well, 
Peace to the ashes of the dead who nobly fighting fell. 
'T was in a glorious cause they died, the Union to maintain. 
We who are left, when called upon, will try it o'er again. 

Some of the disagreeable features of a soldier's 
duty and camp life were dealt with by the soldiers 
in the spirit of humorous exaggeration, which was 
as much an evidence of high spirits as the enthusi- 
astic choruses. A camp poet thus relieves his feel- 
ings in regard to the exercise of " double quick : " — 

Since I became a volunteer things have went rather queer ; 
Some say I 'm a three months' man, and others a three years' 

volunteer. 
With plenty of likes and dislikes to all I have to stick ; 
There 's plenty of pork, salt horse, and plenty of Double- 
Quick. 

Oh, I 'm miserable, I 'm miserable, 

To all I '11 have to stick. 
The old salt horse is passable, 
But d n the Double-Quick. 

If a friend should call to see you the men have a pretty game. 
They call him paymaster, obstacle, or some such kind of a 
name. 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAB. 59 

They chase him around the camp ; it 's enough to make him 

sick 
To try and teach him discipline by giving him Double-Quick. 

You may feel rather hungry, almost in a starving state, 
And you wish to get your dinner first, all ready with your 

plate ; 
There 's always others just the same, waiting for the lick ; 
To be the twentieth one, you must travel Double-Quick. 

Once upon every Sunday to church you must always go, 
Your bayonet by your side in case you should meet the foe ; 
And when the service was ended it was called the moral trick 
To drive you back to your camp at a pleasant Double-Quick. 

Each day there are just twelve roll-calls to keep you in the 

camp ; 
If off three rods the bugle sounds, back you will have to tramp, 
And, if you chance to miss, why, you are a poor, gone chick, — 
Fourteen bricks in your knapsack, and four hours Double- 
Quick. 

Now, all you chaps who would enlist, don't leap before you 

look, 
And, if you wish to fight for the Union, go on your own hook, 
For, if a soldier you become, it will be your last kick, 
To the devil you will surely be drove headlong Double-Quick. 

The Southern poetry of the civil war was even 
more rhetorical and stilted than that of the North. 
Its literary culture was more provincial, and its 
style a great deal more inflated and artificial. It 



60 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

was the " foemen " that they were to meet instead 
of the enemy, and "gore" instead of blood that 
was to be shed ; and there was a great deal about 
the "clank of the tyrant's chain," and the "blood- 
stained sword," and such other fuliginous figures 
of speech. Sometimes there was a good deal of 
force behind this sounding rhetoric, as in Henry 
Timrod's A Call to Arms and in James R. Ran- 
dall's There 's Life in the Old Land yet, but for 
the most part it had an air of bombast and tur- 
gidity, which would have given a false impres- 
sion in regard to the real spirit of determina- 
tion among the Southern people, if one had only 
judged by its inflated expression. The pages of 
the Southern Amaranth, and other collections of 
rebel poetry, give the impression of having been 
written by school-boys, and contain little but soph- 
omoric rhetoric of the most sounding and inflated 
description. That it had a fiery energy and an 
invincible determination behind it was abundantly 
shown, but the voice of the South in its polite liter- 
ature was one of inflated extravagance. Never- 
theless it produced the most manly and vigorous 
song: of the whole war in Dr. J. W. Palmer's 
Stonewall Jackson's Way; and some verses ap- 
peared in a Richmond paper in 1861, entitled Call 
All, which have a fiery energy and directness un- 
surpassed, and were in the genuine language of 
the people : — 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 61 

CALL ALL. 

Whoop ! the Doodles have broken loose, 
Roaring around like the very deuce. 
Lice of Egypt, a hungry pack ; 
After 'em, boys, and drive 'em back, 

Bull-dog, terrier, cur, and fice, 
Back to the beggarly land of ice. 
Worry 'em, bite 'em, scratch and tear 
Everybody and everywhere. 

Old Kentucky is caved from under ; 
Tennessee is split asunder, 
Alabama awaits attack, 
And Georgia bristles up her back. 

Old John Brown is dead and gone, 
Still his spirit is marching on, — 
Lantern-jawed, and legs, my boys, 
Long as an ape's from Illinois. 

Want a weapon ? Gather a brick, 
A club or cudgel, a stone or stick, 
Anything with a blade or butt, 
Anything that can cleave or cut ; 

Anything heavy, or hard, or keen ; 
Any sort of slaying machine ; 
Anything with a willing mind 
And the steady arm of a man behind. 

Want a weapon ? Why, capture one ; 
Every Doodle has got a gun, 



62 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

Belt and bayonet, bright and new. 
Kill a Doodle and capture two ! 

Shoulder to shoulder, son and sire, 
All, call all ! to the feast of fire, 
Mother and maiden, child and slave, 
A common triumph or a single grave. 

The street ballad did not exist in the South, so 
far as I can discover, and the popular song-books 
were very few in comparison with those of the 
North. There were some, however, printed on 
discolored paper and with worn-out type. Among 
them were The New Confederate Flag Songster, 
S. C. Griggs, Mobile ; The General Lee Songster, 
John C. Schreiner & Son, Macon and Savannah ; 
The Jack Morgan Songster, compiled by a cap- 
tain in General Lee's army ; and Songs of Love 
and Liberty, compiled by a North Carolina lady, 
Raleigh, 1864. Like the Northern song-books, 
they contained an admixture of the popular negro 
melodies with the songs of the war, and there are 
but few instances of any genuine and native expres- 
sion. The song which gave the title to The Jack 
Morgan Songster, however, has a good deal of 
force and vigor, and was evidently written by the 
camp fire. It is entitled Three Cheers for our 
Jack Morgan : — 

The snow is in the cloud, 

And night is gathering o'er us, 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAB. 63 

The winds are piping loud, 

And fan the flame before us. 
Then join the jovial band, 

And tune the vocal organ, 
And with a will we '11 all join in 

Three cheers for our Jack Morgan. 

Chorus. Gather round the camp fire, 

Our duty has been done, 
Let 's gather round the camp fire 

And have a little fun. 
Let 's gather round the camp fire, 

Our duty has been done, 
'Twas done upon the battle field, 

Three cheers for our Jack Morgan. 

Jack Morgan is his name, 

The peerless and the lucky ; 
No dastard foe can tame 

The son of old Kentucky. 
His heart is with his State, 

He fights for Southern freedom ; 
His men their General's word await, 

They '11 follow where he '11 lead 'em. 

He swore to free his home, 

To burst her chains asunder, 
With sound of trump and drum 

And loud Confederate thunder. 
And in the darksome night, 

By light of homesteads burning, 
He puts the skulking foe to flight, 

Their hearts to wailings turning. 



64 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

The dungeon, dark and cold, 

Could not his body prison, 
Nor tame a spirit bold 

That o'er reverse had risen. 
Then sing the song of joy, 

Our toast is lovely woman, 
And Morgan he 's the gallant boy 

To plague the hated foeman. 

The tone of the Southern songs was not only a 
good deal more ferocious and savage than that of 
those of the North, but there were fewer indications 
of that spirit of humor which pervaded the North- 
ern camps, and found expression in the soldiers' 
songs. There is, however, one Southern piece of 
verse, descriptive of the emotions of the newly 
drafted conscript, which has an original flavor of 
comicality, although evidently inspired by the spirit 
of Yankee Doodle : — 

THE VALIANT CONSCRIPT. 

How are you, boys ? I 'm just from camp, 

And feel as brave as Csesar ; 
The sound of bugle, drum, and fife 

Has raised my Ebenezer. 
I 'm full of fight, odds shot and shell, 

I '11 leap into the saddle, 
And when the Yankees see me come, 

Lord, how they will skedaddle ! 

Hold up your head, up, Shanghai, Shanks, 
Don't shake your knees and blink so, 



FOLK-SONGS OF TEE CIVIL WAR. 65 

It is no time to dodge the act ; 

Brave comrades, don't you think so ? 

I was a ploughboy in the field, 

A gawky, lazy dodger, 
When came the conscript officer 

And took me for a sodger. 
He put a musket in my hand, 

And showed me how to fire it ; 
I marched and countermarched all day ; 

Lord, how I did admire it ! 

With corn and hog fat for my food, 

And digging, guarding, drilling, 
I got as thin as twice-skimmed milk, 

And was scarcely worth the killing. 
And now I 'm used to homely fare, 

My skin as tough as leather, 
I do guard duty cheerfully 

In every kind of weather. 

I 'm brimful of fight, my boys, 

I would not give a " thank ye " 
For all the smiles the girls can give 

Until I 've killed a Yankee. 
High private is a glorious rank, 

There 's wide room for promotion ; 
I '11 get a corporal's stripes some day, 

When fortune 's in the notion. 

'T is true I have not seen a fight, 
Nor have I smelt gunpowder, 



66 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

But then the way I '11 pepper 'em 

Will be a sin to chowder. 
A sergeant's stripes I now will sport, 

Perhaps be color-bearer, 
And then a captain — good for me — 

I '11 be a regular tearer. 

I '11 then begin to wear the stars, 

And then the wreaths of glory, 
Until the army I command, 

And poets sing my story. 
Our Congress will pass votes of thanks 

To him who rose from zero, 
The people in a mass will shout, 

Hurrah, behold the hero ! 

(Fires his gun by accident.') 

What 's that ? oh dear ! a boiler 's burst, 

A gaspipe has exploded, 
Maybe the Yankees are hard by 

With muskets ready loaded. 
On, gallant soldiers, beat 'em back, 

I '11 join you in the frolic, 
But I 've a chill from head to foot, 

And symptoms of the colic. 

The spirit of the Southern women is well known 
to have been as vigorous and. determined as that of 
their brothers, and the sacrifices which they were 
compelled to make were much more severe and 
general than at the North. They had been de- 
pendent upon the North and foreign countries for 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAE. 67 

clothing and the luxuries of the household, and 
when these sources of supply were cut off by the 
war and the blockade, they had to make and sew 
their own homespun dresses, and forego all the de- 
lights of fashion and adornment. The sacrifices 
and devotion of the daughters of the South were 
sung in turgid rhetoric, like the threats and ap- 
peals of the men, but here is a genuine voice, evi- 
dently a woman's own, which speaks for her sisters 
in their homelier trials, as well as in their deeper 
emotions : — 

THE SOUTHERN GIRL'S SONG. 

Oh yes, I am a Southern girl, 

And glory in the name, 
And boast it with far greater pride 

Than glittering wealth or fame. 
We envy not the Northern girl 

With robes of beauty rare, 
Though diamonds grace her snowy neck 

And pearls bedeck her hair. 

Hurrah, hurrah, 

For the sunny South so dear. 
Three cheers for the homespun dress 

That Southern ladies wear ! 

The homespun dress is plain, I know, 

My hat 's palmetto, too, 
But then it shows what Southern girls 

For Southern rights will do. 



68 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAE. 

We have sent the bravest of our land 

To battle with the foe, 
And we will lend a helping hand ; 

We love the South, you know. 

Now, Northern goods are out of date, 

And since old Abe's blockade, 
We Southern girls can be content 

With goods that 's Southern made. 
We sent our sweethearts to the war, 

But, dear girls, never mind, 
Your soldier love will ne'er forget 

The girl he left behind. 

The soldier is the lad for me, 

A brave heart I adore ; 
And when the sunny South is free, 

And when the fight is no more, 
I '11 choose me then a lover brave 

From out the gallant band ; 
The soldier lad I love the best 

Shall have my heart and hand. 

The Southern land 's a glorious land, 

And has a glorious cause ; 
Then cheer, three cheers for Southern rights 

And for the Southern boys. 
We '11 scorn to wear a bit of silk, 

A bit of Northern lace ; 
And make our homespun dresses up, 

And wear them with such grace. 

And now, young men, a word to you : 
If you would win the fair, 



FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAE. 69 

Go to the field where honor calls 

And win your lady there. 
Remember that our brightest smiles 

Are for the true and brave, 
And that our tears are all for those 

Who fill a soldier's grave. 

The folk-songs of the civil war, in which millions 
were engaged and which lasted for four years, do 
not compare in quality with those which much 
lighter struggles have produced, notably the Jacob- 
ite rebellion in Scotland. The Americans were 
not a singing people in the bent of their genius, 
and the conditions of life and civilization were not 
favorable to this form of expression. The news- 
paper had taken the place of the ballad as a means 
of influencing the public mind, and poetry had 
passed from the people to the literary artists. So 
when the great crisis of the civil war came, affect- 
ing all minds and all hearts, the people were un- 
familiar with this mode of expression, and the lit- 
erary artists had not the power to interpret their 
feelings except in their own artificial forms with- 
out touching the heart or giving vital meaning 
to the voice. The accident of the combination 
of genius with this sincerity, which produced La 
Marseillaise and Der Wacht am Ehein, did not 
occur, so that the great struggle is without an 
equally great song embodying and interpreting the 



70 FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAB. 

spirit of the nation, and whatever fine poems and 
songs there were distinctly fall below this ideal. 
Bnt in such a struggle the voice of the people 
could not fail to find expression by the means 
which the history of mankind has shown to be the 
most natural expression of emotion and enthusiasm, 
and their songs, however imperfect, either as liter- 
ature or popular poetry, are the most genuine ex- 
pression of the feelings and thoughts which filled 
their hearts and minds, and have a genuineness 
which informs the rude or inadequate words, and 
are a most important illustration of the history of 
that tremendous conflict. 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH POPULAR 
BALLADS. 

Professor Francis James Child's edition of 
the English and Scottish Popular Ballads, monu- 
mental in size, is still more monumental in the labor 
which it represents. It embodies not only diligent 
research for the most authentic and original ver- 
sions of the ancient ballads in all the known sources 
in print or in manuscript, and the recovery of many 
from still living traditions in Great Britain and the 
United States, but a careful study and comparison 
of the folk-song of kindred European nations and 
of the world for resemblances in subject and story ; 
thus making a most interesting and valuable addi- 
tion to the knowledge of the common development 
of the human intellect in primitive thought and 
form of expression in diverse countries. How much 
study this has involved can only be appreciated by 
those who have seen its results in the concise in- 
troductions to each ballad, citing comparisons in 
every known literature, and yet further work in this 
direction will be left for later scholars, as the study 
and collection of folk-song is being pursued with 



72 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

more and more zeal and success in every quarter of 
the world, under the appreciation of its great liter- 
ary as well as historical value. Professor Child has 
been governed by the strictest conscientiousness 
in giving his version of the popular ballads, not 
only going to the original sources like the Percy 
folio, the manuscript materials for The Minstrelsy 
of the Scottish Border preserved at Abbotsford, 
Motherwell's note books, and other manuscripts and 
stall copies, but reprinting them with all their omis- 
sions and defects, not supplying the most obvious 
missing word or even letter without indicating it. 
He has not followed the example of the strictly 
faithful editors of the ancient ballads like Mother- 
well in presenting alone the most complete and 
perfect specimen, nor allowed himself like others, 
substantially faithful, like Scott and Jamieson, to 
collate a number of copies derived from different 
sources into a harmonious whole, but gives each 
version distinct in itself, even to a solitary variant 
verse. It is one of the commonplaces of the his- 
tory of English and Scottish ballad poetry that 
most of its collectors and editors from Bishop Percy 
downward have felt themselves entitled to amend 
and correct the imperfect fragments to a greater or 
less degree, supplying missing lines or stanzas to 
connect or complete the story, and that this has re- 
sulted sometimes in the most incongruous patchwork 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 73 

in which the sentiments and poetical fashions of 
one generation have been foisted upon those of an- 
other to the utter destruction of all verisimilitude, to 
say nothing of strength and genuineness of expres- 
sion. Bishop Percy, with all his fine taste and gen- 
uine poetic power, was a conspicuous sinner in this 
respect, and patched the rough and strong frieze 
of the ancient ballads with pieces of the thin and 
sleazy silk of eighteenth century sentiment and 
diction. Even Scott, with all his sense of hon- 
esty and appreciation of the value of the integrity 
of the ancient ballads, could not always refrain 
from his possessing temptation " to give a hat and 
stick" to the stories which he heard, and, as Pro- 
fessor Child points out, there are some stanzas in 
the Border Minstrelsy which bear suspiciously his 
mark, and of which the originals have not been 
found in his manuscript materials. It is true 
enough that Scott's additions and emendations, as 
well as those of Allan Cunningham, who was 
wholly indifferent to the genuineness and integrity 
of his originals, were likely to be in the very spirit 
and turn of expression of the ancient ballads, and 
that the lover of poetry for its own sake will 
not be likely to find fault with them, but the real 
student of folk - song must repudiate them, and 
can be content only with the genuine expressions 
of the people, as they lived in tradition, however 



74 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

inchoate and imperfect they may be. The histori- 
cal and ethnological value of the ancient ballads 
consists in their absolute genuineness, and even the 
imperfection of their utterances illustrates the con- 
dition of the popular mind and the characteristics 
of the individual intelligence which produced them, 
and are important geological evidences of the 
growth and development of the human intellect. 
At the same time this very imperfection of speech, 
and the struggle of primitive thought to express it- 
self in language sometimes creates, as it were by 
accident, the very flower of strength and vividness 
in picturesque description, and the interpretation of 
emotion as the most skillful art has been unable to 
do. How strong these ballads were, and what a hold 
they had upon the minds and imaginations of the 
people, as the interpretation of their innate poetic 
spirit, is shown in the tenacity with which they 
have lived, and been reproduced in varying forms 
through generations down to the present day. Bal- 
lads like The Cruel Sister and Lord Thomas and 
Fair Annet, the production probably of the sixteenth 
or seventeenth century, have been recovered, with 
the essential burden of their verse and the subject 
of their story, from the mouths of English peasants 
and Irish servant girls, and in the folk-lore of the 
American nursery, to which they had been trans- 
mitted simply by the force of oral tradition, and 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 75 

without any assistance from print ; and it is not 
likely that they will entirely disappear for genera- 
tions to come, any more than the perennial nursery 
tales which were created by and appeal to the prim- 
itive and childish imagination. These traditional 
versions have been altered to suit the localities, and 
weakened in their coherence and vigor of expres- 
sion from the time when they were the literature of 
the main body of the people instead of the lowest 
class, as the stall copies of the ballads of the ancient 
minstrels, when they were the attendants of kings 
and nobles and shared the inspiration of chivalry, 
have been degraded to the level of the intelligence 
of the audience of the street singers or the gather- 
ings in the taprooms of the village alehouses ; but 
they retain the essential characteristics of simple 
emotion, inherent melody, and primitive language, 
and have still something of the fine and penetrating 
flavor of popular romance. 

It is almost needless to say to the student of lit- 
erature that the art of popular ballad writing is 
extinct, or is successful only in the rarest instances. 
Poets of genuine power and inspiration, imbued 
and saturated with the spirit of the ancient ballads, 
have attempted to re-create them in the telling of 
an ancient or modern story, but, whatever their 
original power or imitative skill, they have failed 
to reproduce that native strength and peculiar 



76 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

flavor of expression which gives the ancient bal- 
lads such a hold upon the mind. The modern 
ballads are admired by the intellect rather than 
felt by the heart, and are recognized as the product 
of skillful art rather than as the expression of 
original emotion. Even Scott, whose literary gen- 
ius was so saturated with their spirit, and Words- 
worth, who sought his inspiration in the simple 
emotions of the peasant heart and interpreted them 
so perfectly in a literary form of glowing simpli- 
city, could not produce a popular ballad, and even 
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, with all its powerful 
and naked mystery and natural archaism of thought 
and language, appeals to the literary rather than 
to the popular imagination. All the more absolute 
imitations of ancient literature, like those of Ros- 
setti and Morris, have still more the air of unreality, 
in spite of what is oftentimes their very great power 
and skill, and Sir Samuel Ferguson's Lays of the 
Western Gael, perfect as they are in the repro- 
duction of the Celtic spirit and expression, are for 
the admiration of scholars rather than the feeling 
of the people. It is hardly too much to say that 
in modern English literature there are but two 
poems which fulfill the conditions of the ancient 
ballads in their simplicity, directness, and originality 
of language, their power upon the mind and heart 
through the ear, and the indefinable flavor of prim- 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 77 

itive emotion, and those very different in style, 
subject, and form of expression. These are Cow- 
per's Loss of the Royal George, and Rudyard Kip- 
ling's Danny Deever. Every one who has heard 
it or read it can repeat, — 

Toll for the brave, 

The brave that are no more, 

Sunk beneath the wave 
Fast by their native shore ; 

and the burden and the measure, the simplicity 
and strength of diction, of Danny Deever are 
equally calculated to take a possessing hold upon 
the ear. These ballads are not imitations derived 
from study of the ancient popular ballads, but ob- 
taining their inspiration from the same original 
source in strong and primitive emotion interpreted 
in the simplest language possible, and speaking 
through the ear by the chanted rather than through 
the eye by the printed line. It is this appeal to 
the ear which is the strongest characteristic of the 
form of the ancient ballads. They were made to 
be sung or chanted rather than read, and therefore 
they have a felicity of sound as an interpreter of 
meaning which is often perfect in its expression ; 
and when imperfect, that is, when the meaning is 
not clear, but is only vaguely and dimly attached 
to the sound, as in the refrains and burdens, there 



78 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

is a flavor or an atmosphere of meaning which per- 
vades it and adds to the effect. 

There is a touch of the plaintiveness of natural 
sounds which no literary art could give in the 
opening of The Queen of Elphan's Nourrice : — 

I heard a cow low, a bonnie cow low, 
An' a cow low down in yon fauld. 

Long, long will my young son greet 
Or his mother take him from cauld. 

Even when the burden is still more arbitrary, 
and without any direct reflection of the meaning 
whatever, it is never felt to be incongruous or arti- 
ficial, and has a mystic and intensifying effect, as in 
the painful ballad of The Sheath and Knife : — 

He has made a grave that was long and deep, 
The broom blooms bonnie, and says it is fair, 

And he 's buried his sister, with her babe at her feet, 
And they '11 never gang down to the broom any mair. 

And even when the refrain might be called simply 
a meaningless chant, it makes a part of the ballad 
which could not be taken away without a loss of 
the quality which gives it a living voice, as in the 
chorus, which sings of itself to The Elfin Knight : 

My plaid awa, my plaid awa, 

And o'er the hills and far awa, 
And far awa to Norowa. 

My plaid shall not be blawn awa. 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 79 

As to these stanzas and lines, which give a per- 
fect marriage of sound and meaning either in the 
interpretation of emotion or description, and in 
which the ear is the interpreter of the eye and the 
heart with a skill which no art could give, they are 
numberless, and of the very substance of the genius 
of the old ballad singers. There is nothing in the 
cultivated skill of trochee and spondee to equal 
such untaught perfections of the human voice as 
these : — 

O, we were sisters, sisters seven ; 
We were the fairest under heaven. 

(Gil Brenton.) 

And a lightsome bugle then heard he blowe, 
Over the bents sae browne. 

(Sir Cawline.) 

It was a sad and rainy night, 

As ever rained from town to town. 

(Clerk Saunders.) 

But 't was wind and weet and fire and sleet 
When we came to the castle wa. 

(Kinmont Willie.) 

O, he has ridden o'er field and fell 

Through ruins and moss and many a mire, 

He spurs a steed that was sair to ride, 
And frae her forefeet flew the fire. 

(Annan Water.) 



80 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

And this, in which the very gallop of the horse's 
feet runs along the lines : — 

It 's twenty lang miles to Sillerton toun, 

The langest that ever were gane, 
But the steed it was wight and the lady was light, 
And she rade linkin in. 

(Prince Robert.) 

The element of poetry of the highest kind in 
these ballads is the strength as well as the simpli- 
city of passion interpreted in language of naked 
directness and dramatic power. Their stories are 
mainly those of the bloody tragedies and the vio- 
lent events and emotions in the lives of a people 
to whom strife and adventure were an integral part 
of existence, and whose passions were strong and 
vigorous, although a proportion of the ballads have 
an element of rustic humor, and the cycle of those 
relating to Robin Hood is mainly of this kind. 
There is an element of the supernatural in the 
English and Scottish ballads, more particularly in 
the latter, which, if not so marked and pervading 
as in those of the Celtic nations, shows that the 
mysterious terrors of nature were still embodied in 
the visible forms of the imagination, and that the 
woods were still haunted by elfin knights, the 
green braes by fairies, while human beings were 
still liable to be transformed into laidly worms and 



. ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 81 

foul toads by the enchantment of witches, in at least 
a pervading shadow of popular belief. But for the 
most part they were singularly free from the tinc- 
ture of the marvelous, and mainly the simple chron- 
icles of stirring events or the tragedies of passion. 
This gives them an element of strength, which is 
wanting to the phantasmagorial figures of more 
imaginative nations, whatever glow of misty glory 
shines about them as in the creations of the early 
Celtic bards. The impression of the soul of nature 
is strong but not overpowering as in these latter, 
and the influence of the landscape and the sky in 
storm or calm illuminates but does not interfere 
with the dramatic action. As has been said, 
strength of thought and strength of language are 
their prevailing characteristics. Their strength of 
language is that which belongs to the speech of a 
people when it is fresh and new, and before it has 
been overlaid with words created for literary pur- 
poses and by the introduction of foreign words to 
give niceties of meaning, and no cultivated lan- 
guage has the same power and directness as that 
which is the simple expression of the thoughts of 
the people. Goethe, with his sound critical insight, 
noted this when he said, " The unsophisticated 
man is the more master of direct, effective expres- 
sion than he who has had a regular training," and 
a language may often lose in strength what it gains 



82 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

in ornament and flexibility. This strength of ex- 
pression is written large over all the English and 
Scottish ballads, and specimens are merely arbi- 
trary and may be taken almost at random : — 

Aye she waukened at the dead man, 
And aye she waukened him to and fro. 

(Clerk Saunders.) 

And when she came out of the Kirk, 
She shimmered like the sun. 

(Lord Thomas and Fair Annet.) 

The Lindsays flew like fire about, 
Till all the fray was done. 

(The Battle of Otterbourne.) 

One spak slow, and another whispered out, 
She 's gone wi' Gipsy Davy. 

(The Gipsy Laddy.) 

Twice it lifted its bonnie blue ee, 
Thae looks gae through the saul o' me. 

(The Cruel Mother.) 

There was no maen made for that lady, 

In bower where she lay dead, 
But a' Was for the bonnie babe, 

That lay blabbering in her bleed. 

(Lord Ingram and Child Wyett.) 

O, then she stood and better she stood, 
And never did shed a tear, 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 83 

Till once she saw her seven brethren slain, 
And her father she loved sae dear. 

(The Douglas Tragedy.) 

And when he came to her bower she was pale and wan, 
But she grew red and ruddy, when Glenlogie came in. 

(Glenlogie.) 

The dramatic power of expression, that which 
illumines it with a touch of action, is not less re- 
markable than that of direct phraseology : — 

" Hold up, hold up, Lord William," she says, 

" I fear that you are slain." 
" It 's nothing but the shadow of my scarlet cloak, 

That shines in the water sae plain." 

(Earl Brand.) 

And aye she served the lang table, 

With white bread and with brown, 
And aye she turned her round about, 

Sae fast the tears fell down. 

(Fair Annie.) 

She turned her head on her left shoulder, 

Saw her girdle hang on a tree, 
O, God bless those that gave me that, 

They '11 never give more to me. 

(Lary Maissy.) 

When I rose up in the morn, 
My goodly palace for to lea, 



84 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

I knocked at my lord's chamber door, 
But never a word wad he speak to me. 

(Jamie Douglass.) 

The King looked over his left shoulder, 

And a grim look looked he, 
Earl Martial an' 't were na for my oath 

Or hanged thou shouldst be. 

(Queen Elinor's Confession.) 

The look cast over the shoulder is a very fa- 
miliar action in the ballads, as is also that where 
an angry man strikes the table with his hand and 
"keps " it with his knee. Every one who re- 
ceives the letter is described as first smiling and 
then having his eyes filled with tears, as in Sir 
Patrick Spence, and almost in an exact repetition 
of the language, and there are numerous actions 
and phases which are the common stock of the 
ballad poets. The idea of the exclusive rights to 
poetical property and of the sin of plagiarism does 
not seem to have occurred to them, and they took 
a striking image or an effective phrase wherever 
they found it as a part of the common stock of 
poetry. These familiar and striking phrases doubt- 
less added to the effect, being recognized as old 
friends by the audience, and, like the repetitions 
of words and action by a number of persons in 
the same ballad, such as by the members of a 
family in succession denying the prayer of an un- 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 85 

fortunate, emphasizing and deepening the impres- 
sion. Certain adjectives also became attached to 
words as a part of their property, such as red to 
gold and wan to water, and are essential parts of 
the ballad language, which add to its effect by 
constant repetition. 

One of the charms of these ancient ballads is 
the appreciation of the effects of nature, given 
sometimes with a magical effect of suddenness 
and originality. What can be more effective, 
for instance, than the touch of beauty and charm 
in the tragedy of Babylon : — 

He 's killed the maid and he 's laid her by 
To bear the red rose company. 

And can we not feel the magic of the note of 
elfin horn, touching the heart with irresistible call 
through the summer air, in the opening to Hind 
Etin? — 

Lady Margaret sits at her bower door, 

Sewing her silken seam ; 
She heard a note in Elmond wood, 

And wished she there had been. 

The voice of the unseen sea gives a note of 
deep solemnity and terror to the supernatural 
landscape through which Thomas, the Rhymer, 
journeys with the elfin queen : — 



86 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

And they rode on and farther on, 

And they waded the river above the knee, 

And they saw neither sun nor moon, 
But they heard the roaring of the sea. 

How the strength of a lover's thought is illu- 
minated by the touch of nature itself in Willie and 
Alison : — 

When he was in his saddle set, 

And slowly ridin' on his way, 
He had more mind o' Alison 

Than he had o' the light o' day. 

These touches of the power of nature upon hu- 
man action, and revealing human thought, are scat- 
tered throughout the ballads, and have the effect 
of perfect naturalness and simplicity, as though 
the heart and not the mind spoke in them. 

A specimen of the ancient ballad in its most 
perfect strength, absolute and concise in its con- 
struction, without wandering into irrelevancies and 
incongruities, as many of them do, and in which 
the appalling tragedy strikes with a sudden blow 
upon the heart at its close, is Edward. It has 
all the characteristic features of the ballads, in the 
vivid colors of nature illuminating and intensify- 
ing his dramatic dialogue, while it has the mist 
of blood in the witchlike questions of its opening, 
and the passion of hatred and despair in its close. 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 87 

Ballads of similar form and subject are to be 
found in Scandinavian literature, and counterparts 
to its methods of revelation in various English 
and Scottish ballads, but none have so pure a con- 
struction and so perfect an effect as this : — 

" Why does your brand sae drap wi' bluid, 
Edward, Edward ? 
Why does your brand sae drap wi' bluid, 
And why sae sad gang yee, O ? " 
" O, I hae killed my hauke sae guid, 
Mither, mither. 
O, I hae killed my hauke sae guid, 



" Your hauke's bluid was nevir sae reid, 
Edward, Edward. 
Your hauke's bluid was nevir sae reid, 

My deir son, I tell thee, O." 
' O, I hae killed my red roan steed, 

Mither, mither. 
O, I hae killed my red roan steed 
That was sae fair and free, O." 

"Your steed was auld and ye hae gat mair, 
Edward, Edward. 
Your steed was auld and ye hae got mair. 
Sum other dule ye drie, O." 
" 0, I hae killed my fadir deir, 
Mither, mither. 
O, I hae killed my fadir deir. 
Alas ! and wae is mee, O." 



88 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

" And whatteu penance will ye drie for that, 
Edward, Edward ? 
And whatten penance will ye drie for that, 
My deir son ? Now tell niee, O." 
" I '11 set my feit in yonder boat, 
Mither, mither. 
1 '11 set my feit in yonder boat, 

And I '11 fare ovir the sea, O." 

" And what will you doe wi' your towirs and your ha', 
Edward, Edward ? 
And what will you doe wi' your towirs and your ha', 
That were sae fair and free, O ? " 
" I '11 let them stand tul they down fa', 
Mither, mither. 
I '11 let them stand tul they down fa', 

For here nevir mair maun I bee, O." 

" And what wul ye leave to your bairns and your wife, 
Edward, Edward ? 
And what wul ye leave to your bairns and your wife, 
When ye gang ovir the sea, O ? " 
" The warlde's room, late them beg thrae life, 
Mither, mither. 
The warlde's room, late them bag thrae life, 
For them nevir mair wul I see, O." 

" And what wul ye leave to your ain mither, deir, 
Edward, Edward ? 
And what wul ye leave to your ain mither, deir, 
My deir son ? Now tell mee, O." 
"The curse of hell frae me sail ye beir, 
Mither, mither. 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 89 

The curse of hell f rae me sail ye beir, 
Sic counseils ye gave to me, 0." 

Edward was communicated to Bishop Percy 
from Scotland by Lord Hailes, and there is some 
affectation in the ancient spelling, but it is undoubt- 
edly genuine, and, as Professor Child remarks, " as 
spelling will not make an old ballad, so it will not 
unmake one." 

One of the most famous and best known of the 
ancient Scottish ballads is that entitled Waly, 
Waly, gin Love be Bony, or, as it is sometimes 
called, Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament, which was 
first published in Kamsay's Tea Table Miscellany. 
It has numerous variants embodying the language 
of the lament in stories of a more dramatic char- 
acter, founded on a tradition of the Douglas fam- 
ily, but this has the strength and simplicity of an 
original : — 

O, waly, waly, up the bank, 

And waly, waly, down the brae ; 

And waly, waly, yon burn-side, 
Where I and my love wont to gae. 

I leaned my back unto an aik, 
I thought it was a trusty tree ; 

But first it bowed, and syne it brak, 
Sae my true love did lightly me. 

O, waly, waly, but love be bony, 
A little time, while it is new ; 



90 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

But when it 's auld it waxeth cauld, 
And fades away like morning dew. 

O, wherefore should I brush my head ? 

O, wherefore should I kaim my hair, 
For my true love has me forsook, 

And says he '11 never love me mair. 

Now, Arthur's seat shall be my bed, 
The sheets shall ne'er be fyld by me ; 

Saint Anton's well shall be my drink 
Since my true love 's forsaken me. 

Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blow, 
And shake the green leaves off the tree ? 

O, gentle death, when wilt thou come, 
For of my life I am weary. 

'T is not the frost that freezes fell, 
Nor blawing snaw's inclemency ; 

'T is not the cauld as makes me cry, 
But my love's heart grown cauld to me. 

When we came in by Glasgow town, 
We were a comelie sight to see ; 

My love was clad in black velvet, 
And I myself in cramoisie. 

But had I wist before I kist 

That love had been sae ill to win ; 

I 'd locked my heart in a case of gold, 
And pinned it with a silver pin. 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 91 

Oh, oh, if my young babe was born, 
And set upon the nurse's knee ; 

And I mysell were dead and gone, 
For a maid again I '11 never be. 

The burden of this lament, its simple passion 
appealing to the popular heart and its melody 
holding the ear, has been perpetuated through the 
generations since it was first sung. It has been 
printed in all forms and variations in the broad- 
sides and penny song books, as well as in the criti- 
cal collections of poetry, solaced the sentimental 
feeling of the dairy maid as well as haunted the 
vision of Charles Lamb, and its refrain may be 
heard to-day in the burlesque choruses of the negro 
minstrel stage. A very interesting example is 
given by Professor Child of the way in which an 
old ballad of perfect form and construction may be 
made incoherent and shapeless in a broadside copy, 
mere matter of " silly sooth " for old age or primi- 
tive ignorance, without losing the fine flower of 
pathos and feeling, or the grace of expression, in 
its disconnected and ejaculatory stanzas. It is also 
interesting as an example, of which many others 
could be given, of the effect of oral tradition pass- 
ing from minds of native strength, if without edu- 
cation, down to and through those of a lower order 
of intelligence, from whom now only the debris 
of the ancient songs and ballads can be obtained. 



92 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

It is from a broadside printed in Edinburgh, with- 
out date, but of considerable antiquity, and enti- 
tled Arthur's Seat shall be My Bed, etc., or Love 
in Despair. 

Come lay me soft and draw me near, 
And lay thy white hand over me ; 

For I am starving in the cold, 
And thou art bound to cover me. 

O, cover me in my distress, 

And help me in my miserie ; 
For I do wake, when I should sleep, 

All for the love of my dearie. 

My rents they are but very small, 
For to maintain my love withall ; 
But with my labour and my pain, 
I will maintain my love with them. 

O, Arthur's seat shall be my bed, 

And the sheets shall never be filed by me, 

St. Anthony's well shall be my drink, 
Since my true love 's forsaken me. 

Should I be bound, that may go free ? 
Should I love them that love not me ? 
I '11 rather travel into Spain, 
Where I '11 get love for love again. 

And I '11 cast off my robes of black, 
And will put on the robes of blue ; 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 93 

And I will come to some other land 
To see if my love will on me rue. 

It is not the cold that makes me cry, 
It is not the weet that wearies me ; 
Nor is it the frost that freezes fell, 
But I love a lad, and I dare not tell. 

Oh, faith is gone, and truth is past, 
And my true love 's forsaken me ; 

If all be true that I hear say, 
I '11 mourn until the day I die. 

Oh, if I had nere been born, 

That to have died, when I was young ; 

Then I had never wet my cheeks 
For the love of any woman's son. 

Oh, oh, if my young babe was born, 

And set upon the nurse's knee ; 
And I myself were dead and gone, 

For a maid again I shall never be. 

Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blow, 
And blow the green leefs off the tree ; 

gentle Death, when wilt thou come, 
For of my life I am wearie. 

As in all single hearts and primitive natures, 
the visible features of death, the white shroud and 
the grave, " hap'd with the sods sae green," make 
a deep impression, and the imagination concerning 



94 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

the loved one lost is not lifted to spiritual forms, 
but dwells upon the painful figures of the charnel 
house. The ghosts that visit the living have the 
fatal breath of decaying mortality, and are sum- 
moned back by the cock to the winding sheet and 
the worm. The ballads that deal with this subject 
are all in the same strain, and repeat the same 
phrases. The lady asks her dead lover if there is 
any room at his head or any room at his feet in his 
new bed, and he answers that there is none, it is 
made so narrow, and that the worms are his only 
bedfellows ; and warns her that he cannot give the 
kiss she craves, for his breath would be fatal. 
Sometimes the images of mortality are extremely 
powerful as well as grotesque, as in the ballad of 
Sweet William's Ghost : — 

My meikle toe is my gavil post, 

My nose is my roof tree, 
My ribs are kebars to my house ; 

There is no room for thee. 

Sometimes they have a touch of homely pathos, 
which relieves them from the conventional note of 
sorrow, as when the three sons of The Wife of 
Usher's Well are called back to the grave by the 
crowing cock, and the youngest says : — 

Fare ye weel, my mother, dear ; 
Farewell to barn and byre, 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 95 

And fare ye weel, the bonny lass, 
That kindles my mother's fire. 

One of the most interesting specimens of the 
ballads of this kind, as they exist to-day, borrowed 
in a modified form from the ancient, but embody- 
ing a still popular superstition, is The Unquiet 
Grave, recently taken down from the lips of a 
young girl in Sussex. It is founded on the belief, 
common to many primitive peoples, that excessive 
weeping disturbs the repose of the departed, and 
has a touch of that natural originality of descrip- 
tion and that abruptness which presupposes a 
quickness of appreciation, which does not require 
an elaborate story to make the connection intelli- 
gible, characteristic of popular poetry, and which 
shows that the elements of mind to which it is 
addressed are always the same : — 

The wind doth blow to-day, my love, 

And a few small drops of rain. 
I never had but one true love — 

In the cold grave she was lain. 

I '11 do as much for my true love 

As any young man may, 
I '11 sit and mourn all at her grave 

For a twelvemonth and a day. 

The twelvemonth and a day being up, 
The dead began to speak : 



96 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

" O, who sits weeping on my grave 
And will not let me sleep ? " 



" 'T is I, my love, sits on your grave 

And will not let yon sleep ; 
For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips, 

And that is all I seek." 

" You crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips, 
But your breath smells earthly strong ; 
If you have one kiss of my clay-cold lips 
Your time will not be long." 

'T is down in yonder garden green, 

Love, where we used to walk : 
The finest flower that e'er was seen 

Is withered on the stalk. 

The stalk is withered dry, my love, 

So will our hearts decay : 
So make yourself content, my love, 

Till God calls you away. 

By far the larger number of the popular ballads 
had their origin in Scotland, and they are also of 
much finer quality than those of England. Even 
if the question of the origin of the ballad of 
Chevy Chace should be decided in favor of the lat- 
ter, it would simply be localized upon the Border 
within the limit of Scottish influence. The English 
ballads are mostly heavy and dull, imperfect in form 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 97 

and expression, in comparison with the Scottish, 
and show few signs of the depth and glow of feeling 
in the burning words of the latter. The English 
ballads relating to King Arthur are greatly inferior 
in strength and spirit to the prose chronicles, and 
their dealing with the marvelous is coarse and 
commonplace in comparison with the spiritual and 
majestic mystery of the Welsh cycle of Arthurian 
romance. And the English ballads continued to 
degenerate, rather than improve, from the rude 
vigor of some of the Arthurian ballads, and took 
on the element of coarse humor which is char- 
acteristic of the Eobin Hood cycle, from which 
nearly every gleam of poetry is eliminated. It 
may be said that the degeneracy of the English 
popular ballad was due to the spread of education 
among the people, and the development of their 
genius in more strictly literary forms under the 
influence of Chaucer and his associates. But the 
spread of education and the increase of literary 
production among the English people was by no 
means so general as to affect the quality of the 
popular ballad at this period, and certainly less 
than that which prevailed in Scotland at a later 
time, when the production of popular poetry was 
in its fullest flower. The adventures of the Eng- 
lish outlaws, of whom Robin Hood, however mythi- 
cal his actual existence, was the type, were not less 



98 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

stirring and full of the natural elements of poetry 
than those of the reivers and cattle thieves of the 
Scottish Border, but the ballads of the former 
cycle are only full of a vulgar peasant humor, while 
the latter are illuminated with the light of battle, 
and have the quarter staff and broken pate in 
place of the spear and the bleeding breast. Of 
Robin Hood it is said : — 

Then Robin took them both by the hand, 

And danced about the oke tree ; 
For three merry men and three merry men 

And three merry men are we. 

While the Lord of Branxholm cries : 

Gae warn the water broad and wide, 

Gae warn it sune and hastilie ; 
He that winna ride for Telfer's Kyle 

Let him neer look in the face o' me. 

and the difference in the spirit is reflected in the 
quality of the verse, the one dull and commonplace, 
suited to an audience of heavy-faced rustics in an 
alehouse, and the other full of fire and vigor, fit 
to be chanted in the dining hall of a Border chief. 
It is impossible to analyze ethnologically the 
causes of the great superiority of the Scottish pop- 
ular poetry, or to define how much of the elevation 
of feeling and appreciation of the magic of nature 
came from the greater admixture of the Celtic ele- 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 99 

ment, which in its turn was given force and 
vigor, directness of expression and coherence of 
construction by the stronger nature of the invading 
element, which, for the want of a more definite 
term, is called Saxon. The effect of these influ- 
ences is merely conjectural, as is also that of the 
country itself, its natural scenery, the disturbed life 
of the people, and the ferment of the popular mind. 
It can only be said that there was something in the 
national genius of the Lowland Scotch different 
from that of their more stolid neighbors at the 
south and their more mystical neighbors at the 
north, and which fitted them for the production of 
popular poetry in song and ballad at once elevated 
and impassioned, and which has resulted in a quan- 
tity and quality which no other province of the 
world has rivaled. It is known over the world, 
and has been translated into almost every literary 
language of Europe. To the English reader it is 
only necessary to give the titles to recall the verses 
that cling to the memory, and express the deepest 
glow of passion and pathos in words whose magic 
melody is beyond the reach of art, and which are 
winged with a force above the powers of uninspired 
speech. The Border Widow tells how she buried 
her slain husband : — 

I took his body on my back, 

And whiles I gaed and whiles I sat, 

LOFC 



100 ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 

I digged a grave and laid him in, 
And happd him with sod sae green. 

Lord Eandal comes home to his mother from his 
false love's poisoned banquet : — 

O, where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son, 

O, where hae ye been, my handsome young man ; 

I have been to the greenwood ; mither, mak my bed soon, 
For I 'm wearie wi hunting and fain wald lie down." 

The lady of the House of Airlie cries out from 
the burning reek to the cruel Edom o' Gordon : — 

" Were my good lord but here this day, 
As he 's awa wi Charlie ; 
The dearest blood o' a' thy men 
Wad sloken the lowe o' Airlie." 

Johnnie Armstrong gives his last " Good Night " 
in defiance : — 

O, how John looked over his left shoulder, 
And to his merry men thus spoke he ; 
" I have asked grace of a graceless face, 
No pardon here for you and me." 

Mary Hamilton cries from the gallows-tree in a 
burst of anguish : — 

O, little did my mother ken, 

The day she cradled me, 
The land I was to travel in, 

The death I was to dee. 



ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS. 101 

These verses, and many like them, cling to the 
tongues and have sunk deep into the hearts of men, 
and will live until the speech in which they were 
created has passed away. The Flower of Yar- 
row will always utter her melodious lament so 
long as there is English poetry, and the Border 
moss-troopers will ride with spear in hand and 
" splent on spauld " until the valleys of the Tweed 
and the Tyne are inhabited by an alien race, and 
the songs in which they are sung have perished like 
those of the Assyrian shepherds. 

The collection and study of folk-song is being 
pursued with a vigor and a scholarly diligence 
which promises to leave no corner of the world 
unransacked, and no people, however simple and 
savage, neglected, and very valuable treasures of 
poetry have been and are being collected, which 
speak to the heart with the native eloquence of un- 
sophisticated feeling and thought, and which give a 
more accurate knowledge of national temperament 
and of the stages of the development of the human 
intellect than any material remains or any histori- 
cal records. But none have as yet been discovered, 
or are likely to be, which have a stronger power of 
original poetry, passion, and pathos, or which reveal 
a more vigorous and noble native genius than the 
ballads and songs which were produced within the 
limits of the little province between the Grampians 
and the Border, 



LADY NAIRNE AND HER SONGS. 

The supreme felicity of lyric song is extremely 
rare even in the greatest masters of the art, and 
seems to come from something outside of them- 
selves, some accident of the moment, some almost 
fortuitous intermingling of sound with meaning, 
which could have been attained by no ordinary 
inspiration and no deliberate skill, however accom- 
plished and sure and strong the poetical organ 
which produced it. It is this supreme felicity, 
when it occurs, by which the lyric song of man, 
with only the elements of harsh and prosaic speech 
and common words to frame it, rivals the magic of 
the bird's note in joyous ecstasy or sorrow, and 
floods the heart, as it captivates the ear, with emo- 
tions sweeter and deeper, more ethereal and more 
mysterious, than life had seemed able to give. It 
is well known that singers, whose skill in the use of 
their vocal organs is the result of highly trained 
art, giving certainty and assurance to a great nat- 
ural gift, and able at all times to commaud what 
seems the full extent of their power, sometimes 
have moments when they surpass themselves and 



LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 103 

exceed the limits of any art, when the voice touches 
a note of magic melody, which they can reach by 
no conscious effort even in the highest moments of 
inspiration, and which seems to come from some 
power not at their conscious command. It seems 
to be the same in lyric poetry, and when the power 
does come, then we have the touch which makes it 
song, as the thrill of the lark, and the ecstasy of 
the mocking-bird in the tropic night, are songs. 
The magic may not be prolonged through an 
entire lyric. It seldom is. It may be only in a 
single line or in a single verse. It may not be even 
the highest strain of feeling or nobility of senti- 
ment, and may even carry with it little definite 
meaning upon analysis. It derives its power from 
the magic melody as much as from the feeling or 
the intelligible sense of the words, and its effect is 
indefinable by any law of the understanding. In 
its highest estate it combines the most penetrating 
feeling with not only perfect but magic melody, 
but it sometimes comes in a wild refrain, in which 
the meaning merely floats in the words, and the 
rhythm, the accent, the song itself, so to speak, is 
predominant. For the first instance there is the 
perfect example of Burns, the rapture caught once 
for a single strain in a song, which does not rise 
above the level of his accomplished skill otherwise, 
and which has the keenest and most penetrating 



104 LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 

feeling, joined to, and permeated by, the perfect 
and magic melody : — 

Had we never loved sae blindly, 
Had we never loved sae kindly, 
Never met and never parted, 
We had ne'er been broken-hearted. 1 

For the second instance, where the melody is 
predominant over the meaning, and where the poet 
seemed only to be affected by the desire to frame 
words that would sing themselves and merely sym- 
bolize his thought, there are very many examples 
in the peasant poetry and folk-song of Scotland, 
— refrains that have no direct connection with the 
song, but, like the note of a second flute in a con- 
certo, intensify the effect of the first strain by a 
kindred, yet diverse accentuation, as 

The broom blooms bonnie and says it is fair ; 

and as the most perfect specimen that occurs, the 
refrain to the ballad of Lord Barnard in Jamie- 
son's collection : — 

O, wow for day ! 

And dear gin it were day ! 

Gin it were day and I were away, 

For I haena long time to stay. 

It is only the uneducated poets who have the 
courage to use language arbitrarily with a purpose 

1 It is needless to say that the supreme felicity of these lines 
has been pointed out by other and more distinguished critics. 



LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 105 

more for melody than for meaning, and when an 
attempt is made to reproduce its effect deliberately, 
as has been done by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and 
William Morris, the result is simply artificial and 
bizarre, in spite of the skill, the intensity, and the 
poetical power of Sister Helen, and the melody 
of the most perfect example of the modern imita- 
tion of the refrain in Morris's The Wind. 

Wind, Wind, thou art sad, art thou kind ? 
Wind, Wind, unhappy ; thou art blind, 
Yet still thou wanderest the lily seed to find. 

Perhaps the most perfect example of the lyric 
song, in which the melody is mingled with and 
sustains and elevates the feeling, and both are con- 
joined in an effect which melts the heart and pos- 
sesses the ear, although the strain is not of so high 
a rapture of love or sorrow as parts of Burns's 
Ae Fond Kiss or Lady Anne Bothwell's Balow, 
and is of a peaceful sweetness and resignation 
rather than passion, is The Land of the Leal, by 
Carolina, Lady Nairne. In its original and sim- 
plest form, before she had interpolated a verse to 
express some of her theological ideas, it is the per- 
fect interpretation of a sweet, solemn, and simple 
thought, the tenderest and purest emotion, breathed 
in an equally simple, but absolutely perfect melody, 
that is like the flowing of limpid water, crystal 



106 LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 

clear and unbroken to the end. The heart of the 
world has responded, and it has a place like none 
other in the tongue of song. 

I 'in wearin' awa, John, 

Like snaw-wreaths in thaw, John, 

I 'm wearin awa' 

To the land o' the leal. 

There 's nae sorrow there, John, 
There 's neither cauld nor care, John, 
The day is aye fair 

In the land o' the leal. 

Our bonnie bairn's there, John, 
She was baith gude and fair, John, 
And, oh, we grudged her sair 
To the land o' the leal. 

But sorrow's seF wears past, John, 
And joy 's a-coniin' fast, John, 
The joy that 's aye to last, 
In the land o' the leal. 

Oh, dry your glist'ning ee, John, 
My saul langs to be free, John, 
And angels beckon me 

To the land o' the leal. 

O, haud ye leal and true, John, 
Your day it 's wearin' through, John, 
And I '11 welcome you 

To the land o' the leal. 



LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 107 

Now fare-ye-weel, my ain John, 
The world's cares are vain, John, 
We '11 meet and will be fain 
In the land o' the leal. 

The fame of the authoress, so far as she can be 
said to have any of her own individual personality, 
rests upon this song, and sufficiently, while the 
English language shall last, but it was not the soli- 
tary example of her genius, and her poetical work, 
although not great in bulk, contains other lyrics of 
a very high quality, with a wide range from high 
martial spirit and homely pathos to gay and frolic- 
some humor, and instinct with the vital and living 
element of song. Lady Nairne was almost mor- 
bidly anxious to retain her incognito as a writer 
during her life, so that her own husband and near- 
est relatives were not in the secret, and those who 
surmised or guessed it hardly dared to allude to it 
in her presence, and the veil has rested over her 
personality to a great degree in comparison with 
the flood of light poured over the words and actions 
of her great contemporaries, Scott and Burns, and 
many lesser figures in Scotch provincial literature 
like Professor Wilson and Hogg. Nevertheless, 
since her death at a very advanced age in 1846, her 
songs have been collected and published under her 
own name, and enough has been made known con- 
cerning her life and character to give to her poetry 



108 LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 

an individuality, and reveal a very gracious, noble 
and engaging figure. 

Carolina Oliphant was born in " the auld bouse 
of Gask," in Perthshire, on the 16th of August, 
1766, six years later than Robert Burns. She 
came of stanch Jacobite stock on both sides, her 
father, Laurence Oliphant, a name since made fa- 
miliar by the singular and notable career of the 
accomplished writer, traveler, and scholar, who 
puzzled the world not less by his naive religious 
aberrations than by his accomplishments, took up 
arms for the Stuarts in " the Forty-five," and suf- 
fered attainder and temporary banishment in com- 
pany with his father, who had also been " out " 
in the Earl of Mar's rebellion in " the Fifteen." 
Young Laurence Oliphant, while in exile at Ver- 
sailles, married his cousin, Margaret Robertson, 
daughter of Duncan Robertson of Strowan, chief 
of the clan Dorrochy. The Robertsons had also 
been ardent Jacobites, and suffered in purse and 
person for their loyalty. The grandfather, Duncan 
Robertson, was notable in character and personality 
as well in adventure and misfortune, and had his 
portrait painted in immortal colors by Scott as the 
Baron of Bradwardine. Carolina, baptized after 
the exiled prince, spent her infancy and early 
childhood on the Continent in France and Belgium, 
under the care of her grandmother, her parents 



LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 109 

being in feeble health, and then returned with them 
to the old home at Gask, where she spent her 
happy, healthy, and gay youth and young woman- 
hood. From a feeble and delicate child she had 
grown into a strong, vigorous, and beautiful young 
woman, the beauty of the country-side, called " the 
Flower of Strathearn " and " the lovely Car," and 
her life was of a kind to strengthen her ardent pa- 
triotism and cultivate her fondness for the native 
music, poetry, and song of which Scotland was full, 
but whose transcendent merits were unknown and 
unappreciated by the literary world until they were 
illuminated by the light of the genius of Burns a 
few years later. The anecdotes of her life give a 
very charming picture of innocent gayety, family 
affection, and friendship. She played the Jacobite 
airs for her aged grandfather, as she afterward 
wrote Jacobite songs for his pleasure, and with a 
skill and feeling which won the difficult approval 
of the famous Neil Gow, the wandering fiddler, 
whose skill on his instrument was like that of 
Scott's " Wandering Willie," and whose presence 
at a laird's house would draw all the young people 
for miles around to dance to the winged notes of 
his strathspeys and hornpipes. She was foremost 
in all scenes of gayety, and is said to have taken a 
carriage at midnight and driven several miles to 
bring one of her young lady friends out of bed for 



110 LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 

a party where partners were scarce. In the simple 
social pleasures of the local aristocracy, the county 
balls and meetings, and the gatherings of the 
tenantry, " the Flower of Strathearn " was a con- 
spicuous figure, while her keen eyes were taking 
in the queer figures that appeared later in all the 
glow of bright humor in The Laird of Cockpen, 
The County Meeting, and Jamie, the Laird. Her 
first verses, The Ploughman, were written for 
a harvest home dinner, and were read by her 
brother as a contribution by an unknown author. 
About this time the first poems of Burns made 
their appearance, and stirred the heart of Scotland 
not less by their original genius than by the revivi- 
fication of the old airs and scraps of songs, finished 
and cleansed of their coarseness, and made to speak 
to the hearts of the people in the drawing-room as 
well as in the peasant's cottage and the taproom 
of the country alehouse. It was the first acknow- 
ledgment, if not the beginning, of that apprecia- 
tion of the wealth of pathos and humor in the 
peasant poetry of Scotland, among the cultivated 
classes, and drew that attention and emulation to 
which all there is of value in modern Scotch poetry 
is due. It was the inspiration of the genius of 
Carolina Oliphant, and from this time she began to 
write the new verses to the old airs, and to replace 
the imperfect, unworthy, and sometimes coarse and 



LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. Ill 

vulgar scraps of songs with the beautiful ones of 
her own, equally Scotch and racy of the soil, and 
full of the thoughts and sentiments as well as the 
dialect of the people. The old grandfather, worn 
with disease and living in the past light of fervid 
days, heard his favorite airs of welcome, gathering, 
and victory, for the Young Chevalier sung to new 
and glowing words, and the young ladies laughed 
at the funny lilts in which were drawn the queer 
figures of the dullards and provincial fops, without 
knowing to whose keen pen they were indebted. 
The Land o' the Leal was written for Mrs. Archi- 
bald Campbell Colquhoun, a dear friend of Miss 
Oliphant, upon the death of an infant daughter, 
and to one other only was the secret of its author- 
ship ever definitely disclosed, although its aurora, 
more or less mysteriously, finally settled around 
the head of Lady Nairne. Mrs. Colquhoun was 
born Mary Anne Erskine, and was the sister of 
that William Erskine afterward Lord Kinedder 
who was the dearest friend and associate of Walter 
Scott in his early Edinburgh days, and the sister, 
who kept the house for her brother until her mar- 
riage with Mr. Colquhoun, was the earliest and 
deepest love of Scott. 

Somewhat late in life Carolina Oliphant married 
her cousin, Major William Nairne, the heir to the 
forfeited Barony of Nairne, Assistant Inspector- 



112 LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 

General of Barracks in Scotland, and with him 
removed to Edinburgh, where she occupied for a 
time a cottage at Porto bello and afterward official 
quarters in Holyrood place. The impulse given by 
Burns to the cultivation of native Scotch poetry 
still continued, and was being strengthened by his 
contributions of songs for the music of the old airs 
in Johnson's Museum, and a coterie of the literary 
ladies of Edinburgh established the Scotch Min- 
strel for the same purpose. To this Mrs. Nairne be- 
came a contributor, with a single friend for a con- 
fidant, under the name of " Mrs. Bogan of Bogan," 
with other pseudonyms, a disguised handwriting 
and other elaborate precautions for concealment. 
There was, of course, a keen curiosity to discover 
the author of these beautiful songs, but the secret 
was well guarded, and not even the husband was 
aware of it. " I dare not even tell William " — 
Mrs. Nairne wrote to.her friend — " lest he blab." 
She and her friend at one time cherished the pur- 
pose of " cleansing and moralizing " the songs of 
Burns, as he had done those of his unknown pre- 
decessors, but a wiser second thought restrained 
them. Miss Oliphant had been " converted," as the 
phrase goes, when a young woman on a visit to 
England, and her piety and religious feeling deep- 
ened with her years, until it took on completely the 
rigid, depressing, and dismal forms of Scotch de- 



LADY NAIRNE AND HER SONGS. 113 

nominationalism, and her genius for poetry shriv- 
eled under it. During the visit of George the 
Fourth to Edinburgh he signalized his theatrical 
clemency by a restoration of the forfeited titles of 
the Jacobite uobility, and Major Nairne became 
Baron Nairne. Lord Nairne survived his restora- 
tion but a few years, and died in 1829, leaving his 
widow with an only son. To his education she de- 
voted herself, residing for a time in Bath, afterward 
in Ireland, and traveling on the Continent for the 
health of the young lord, who was of feeble con- 
stitution, and who died at Brussels in 1837. It is 
painful to read of the narrow bigotry and theologi- 
cal gloom which enveloped the joyous and healthy 
spirit of Lady Nairne. She would not allow her 
son to be taught to dance, and regarded her poetry 
as the somewhat flagitious exercise of a worldly 
spirit, and spent her days in the doubt and self- 
affliction of a harsh creed and in the petty interests 
of a narrow church. She was deeply interested in 
the hopeless task of " converting " the Catholics of 
Ireland and the Jews to Scotch Presbyterianism, 
and was the mentor of her relatives after the fash- 
ion of Mrs. Hannah More, the patroness of bazaars, 
and at one time with her sister was expelled from 
an Italian town for distributing Protestant Bibles 
to the people. But her native nobleness of char- 
acter shone through the theological clouds. She 



114 LADY NAIRNE AND HER SONGS. 

was regarded with affection as well as reverence by 
her younger relatives and her servants, and im- 
pressed all who came in contact with her by the 
cordial grace of her manners, and the aristocratic 
and highly marked contour of her features, which 
in the bloom of youth had made her " the Flower 
of Strathearn." Her benevolence was unceasing 
and self-sacrificing, if not always wisely directed, 
and at one time she had all her family plate sold 
and the proceeds sent to Dr. Chalmers for the sup- 
port of an industrial school for the poor. She lived 
during her later years at the old house of Gask, the 
honored guest of her nephew and his wife, and 
died in 1845 at the advanced age of seventy-one, in 
peace and tranquillity, and with only the gentle de- 
cay of her mental faculties and bodily forces. The 
year after her death her poems were collected and 
published under her own name, and the world for 
the first time knew to whom it was indebted for the 
songs which had impressed themselves upon the 
popular heart and become a distinct and notable 
part of the lyric poetry of Scotland. 

As has been said, The Land o' the Leal reaches 
the highest note in its inspiration, perfection, and 
completeness, within the limits of its purpose, not 
only of Lady Nairne's work, but of all the lyric po- 
etry of Scotland, but it was not the solitary exam- 
ple of a genius which had much of the versatility, 



LADY NAIBNE AND HER SONGS. 115 

if not the fecundity and strength, of Burns, in in- 
terpreting the emotions and the thoughts, the pas- 
sions and the humors, of the Scotch people. Lady 
Nairne's poetical genius was entirely lyric. There 
was no Cotter's Saturday Night, much less any 
scene from Poosey Nancy's alehouse, or witch's 
gathering at Kirk Alloway, in her interpretation 
of Scotch life, and her voice was only the pure lilt 
of Scotch song, grave or gay. Without determined 
literary ambition and the responsibility of a known 
name, the stimulus of production was not absorb- 
ing and lasting, and a good deal of her work was 
simply occasional, careless, and imperfect. The 
best, that which will live as long as Scotch song, 
could be comprised within the limits of a dozen 
pages. But its quality is of the very highest. in 
inspiration and execution, the pure voice of the 
lark lilting beneath the blue cloud, the mourning 
of the croodlin' doo, and the gay warble of the 
cheery thrush. 

Almost as famous in its own and very different 
way as The Land o' the Leal, and almost as per- 
fect in its execution, the limitation of the true lyric 
to the simplest and most absolute words, and the 
complete interpretation of its spirit in the melody, 
is The Laird of Cockpen. It was written, it is 
said, to supply proper words to the gay old air of 
When She cam ben, She bobbit, which being in- 



116 LADY NAIBNE AND HER SONGS. 

terpreted, means that when she came into the 
front of the house, she curtsied, and of which the 
first verse of the imperfect and rather vulgar old 
song is — 

When she cam' ben, she bobbit, 
When she cam' ben, she bobbit, 
When she cam' ben she kissed Cockpen 
And syne denied that she did it. 

But no one can doubt that it was the true pic- 
ture of a character and incident which had given 
laughter to Carolina Oliphant and her young 
friends, and had been the joke of the country-side, 
ere it lilted itself to the rollicking jig. The com- 
monly printed version of The Laird of Cockpen 
is injured by the fact that it has two additional 
verses, contributed by Miss Ferrier, the novelist, 
which destroy its absolute completeness and perfec- 
tion of humor as it was written by Lady Nairne. 

THE LAIRD OF COCKPEN. 

The laird of Cockpen, he 's proud an' he 's great ; 
His mind is taen up wi' things o' the State. 
He wanted a wife his braw house to keep, 
But favour wi' wooin' was fasheous to seek. 

Down by the dyke-side a lady did dwell, 
At his table-head he thought she 'd look well, 
M'Clish's ae daughter o' Claverse-ha'-Lee, 
A penniless lass wi' a long pedigree. 



LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 117 

His wig was well pouthered, as gude as when new, 
His waistcoat was white, his coat it was blue ; 
He put on a ring, a sword and cock'd hat, 
And wha could resist a laird wi' a that. 

He took the grey mare and rode cannily, 
An' rapped at the yett o' Claverse-ha'-Lee. 
" Gae tell Mistress Jean to come speedily ben — 
She 's wanted to speak wi' the Laird o' Cockpen." 

Mistress Jean was makin' the elder-flower wine ; 
" O, what brings the laird at sic' a like time." 
She put off her apron and on her silk gown, 
Her mutch wi' red ribbons, and gaed awa' down. 

An' when she cam' ben he bowed fu low, 
An' what was his errand he soon let her know ; 
Amazed was the laird when the lady said " Na," 
And wi' a laigh curtsie she turned awa'. 

Dumfoundered was he, nae sigh did he gie. 
He mounted his mare — he rade cannily. 
An' often he thought as he gaed thro' the glen, 
She 's daft to refuse the laird o' Cockpen. 

Only a little less humorous and perfect is Jamie, 
the Laird, whose doting mother may have perse- 
cuted Carolina Oliphant herself, or some of her 
friends, with the story of his mental and physical 
perfections until there was this burst of mocking 
vexation, to the tune of The Rock and the Wee 
Pickle Tow : — 



118 LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 

JAMIE, THE LAIRD. 

Send a horse to the water, ye '11 no mak' him drink ; 

Send a fule to the college, ye '11 no mak' him think ; 

Send a craw to the surgin, an' still he will craw ; 

An' the wee laird had nae rummelgumpshion ava ; 

Yet he is the pride o' his fond mother's e'e ; 

In body or mind nae faut can she see ; 
" He 's a fell clever lad an' a bonnie wee man," 

Is aye the beginnin' an' end o' her sang. 
An' oh, she 's a haverin' Lucky, I trow, 
An' oh, she's a haverin' Lucky, I trow. 
" He 's a fell clever lad, an' a bonnie wee man," 
Is aye the beginnin' an' end o' her sang. 

His legs they are bow'd, his e'es they do glee, 
His wig, whiles its off, an' when on, its ajee. 
He 's braird as he 's long — an' ill-f aur'd is he, 
A dafter like body I never did see. 
An' yet for this cretur she says I am deein' ; 
When that I deny — she 's f ear'd at my leein'. 
Obliged to pit up wi' the sair defamation, 
I 'm liken to dee wi' shame and vexation. 
An' oh, she 's a haverin' Lucky, etc. 

An' her clish-ma-clavers gang a' thro' the town, 
An' the wee lairdie trows I '11 hang or I '11 drown ; 
Wi' his gawkie like face yestreen he did say, 
" I '11 maybe tak' you, for Bess I '11 no hae, 
Nor Mollie, nor Effie, nor long-legged Jeanie, 
Nor Nellie, nor Katie, nor skirlin' wee Beenie." 
I stoppet my ears, ran off in a fury — 
I 'm thinkin' to bring them before Judge and Jury. 
For oh, what a randy old Lucky is she, etc. 



LADY NAIBNE AND HEB SONGS. 119 

Frien's, gie yere advice — I '11 follow yere counsel. 
Maun I speak to the Provost or honest Town Council ? 
Or the writers, or lawyers, or doctors ? now say, 
For the law o' the Lucky I shall and will hae. 
The hale town at me are jibbin' an' jeerin', 
For a leddy like rue it 's really past hearin' ; 
The Lucky now maun hae done wi' her claverin', 
For I '11 no pit up wi' her an' her haverin'. 

For oh, she 's a randy, I trow, I trow, 

For oh, she 's a randy, I trow, I trow. 

" He 's a fell clever lad an' a bonnie wee man," 

Is aye the beginnin' an' end o' her sang. 

The finest efflorescence of Scotch lyric poetry, 
which is the richest and finest in the English lan- 
guage, if not in the world, was that of the Jacob- 
ite era, and the influence which followed it and 
inspired the renaissance of Scotch song is the gen- 
ius of Burns, Hogg, Cunningham, Lady Nairne, 
and many more of less distinction, who made a 
galaxy of singers hardly less remarkable in their 
way, as marking an era in literature, than the 
dramatists of the Elizabethan age. The genius 
of folk-song and ballad poetry had always been 
remarkably developed in Scotland, in comparison, 
at least, with England, and, in spite of many charac- 
teristics among the Lowlanders, worldly thrift, bit- 
ter and barren bigotry, and a sort of dourness and 
hardheadedness, not calculated to encourage sen- 
timent and emotion ; and the student of racial dis- 



120 LADY NAIBNE AND HER SONGS. 

tinctions may be inclined to attribute it to the 
influence of Celtic blood and tradition, creating a 
vein of sensitiveness, tenderness, and susceptibility 
to the magic of song and music in the strong and 
hard fabric of the Saxon character. But from 
whatever cause the tendency of the native genius 
was created, its existence was obvious, and from 
the very earliest time, since song began to be pre- 
served in written words, the quality and quantity 
of Scotch folk-poetry and folk-music have been 
remarkable. The native faculty and the inherited 
tendency were all present when the spark of an 
inspiration, involving all the elements of patriotism, 
daring adventure, personal devotion, despair, and 
lamentation, gave fire to the genius of national 
poetry. All the incidents and events of the Eebel- 
lion of Forty-five, the landing of the young Prince 
Charles at Moidart with only seven followers, the 
blaze of fiery loyalty that swept through the High- 
lands at his call, the extraordinary victories won 
by the sheer impetus and hand-to-hand onslaughts 
of the Highland clans, the picturesque entry into 
Edinburgh and the gallant court of Holyrood, the 
swift march into England, which seemed at one 
time to promise to carry the Chevalier into St. 
James's Palace by its rush, the retreat and disor- 
ganization, and finally the woeful slaughter of Cul- 
loden, followed by the attainders and executions 



LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 121 

and the romantic adventures of the Prince in hid- 
ing from his hunters among the mountains and 
islands, all contrived to create themes for song and 
poetry which have never been surpassed in mod- 
ern history. The enterprise was as foolish as it 
was daring, an episode of knight-errantry after the 
age when success was possible, but it had all the 
elements of chivalry in its impulse and conduct, 
and no modern war has been less selfish and sor- 
did, not even the insurrections of Poland or the up- 
rising of the Spanish and German people against 
Napoleon. The young Chevalier himself, only 
twenty-four years of age, tall, handsome, and mar- 
tial, with his flowing yellow hair and Tartan dress, 
and with the fascination of his race in his manner, 
his courage, clemency, and misfortune, gave it the 
personal element so necessary to the highest poetry, 
and altogether the circumstances and the conditions 
combined to create an effervescence of popular po- 
etry which has never been surpassed. Its quantity 
was as remarkable as its quality. The two large 
volumes of Hogg's Jacobite Eelics by no means 
exhausted the collection of songs in the Lowland 
dialect, and to this day those in Gaelic are still 
being discovered by the labors of Professor Blackie 
and others, as they are yet preserved in the bothies 
of the Highlands and the islands. The inspiration 
of the later poets, Burns, Hogg, Cunningham, and 



122 LADY NAIRNE AND HER SONGS. 

Lady Nairne, was hardly less strong, fed as it was 
upon the vivid traditions and by the stories and 
histories of the men living about them, or of their 
own families, full of all the elements of poetry, and 
their purpose to vivify and recreate the native song 
of Scotland must have had its most fertile impulse 
and material in the Jacobite songs, of which the 
country is full. In Lady Nairne the ancestral and 
personal impulse must have been especially strong. 
Her father and mother had been married in exile ; 
her grandfather had been distinguished for his 
services as well as for his misfortunes, and upon 
both sides her family had been notable for more 
than one generation for its loyalty and its impor- 
tance in the Scotch struggle for the restoration of 
the Stuarts. An old ballad says : — 

Gask and Strowan were nae slack, 

and letters of thanks and tokens of gratitude from 
the royal hands were heirlooms of the houses. It 
was a keen pleasure to the grandfather in his old 
age to hear the songs and the music which had 
illumined the unhappy cause, and it is no wonder 
that the earliest inspiration of the young poetess 
was from such themes, and her keenest reward to 
see the blood warming more freely the old man's 
worn cheeks as she sang the new and stirring words 
to the old airs, and found the token of her success 



LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 123 

in his appreciation. The greater portion of her 
Jacobite songs were composed under this inspira- 
tion, and so long as she wrote at all they were her 
favorite themes. They are among the finest in 
what may be termed the modern Jacobite songs, 
unsurpassed by anything of the kind by Burns, 
Hogg, or Cunningham, and only so by that con- 
summate flower of all Scotch Jacobite poetry by 
William Glen : — 

A wee bird cam' to our ha' door, 

while in the pure singing quality, the lilt and the 
verse, there is nothing to exceed the power of — 

The news from Moidart cam' yestreen. 

The story of The Hundred Pipers an' A' is his- 
torically correct in that there were so many mu- 
sicians of the class attached to the little army of 
the Prince, and that the Highland lads did dance 
themselves dry to the pibroch's sound after fording 
the Esk, but it was not on the advance to Carlisle, 
but on the retreat from England, and the scene had 
doubtless been often described by the old laird of 
Strowan. 

THE HUNDRED PIPERS. 

Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a', 
Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a' ; 



124 LADY NAIBNE AND HER SONGS. 

We '11 up an' gie them a blaw, a blaw, 
Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a', 
Oh, it 's owre the Border awa', awa' ; 
It 's owre the Border awa', awa' ; 
We '11 on and we '11 march to Carlisle ha ; 
Wi' its yetts, its castle an' a', an' a', 
Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', etc. 

Our young sodger lads looked braw, looked braw, 
With their tartans, kilts an' a', an' a', 
With their bonnets and feathers and glittering gear, 
An' pibrochs sounding sweet an* clear. 
Will they a' return to their ain dear glen ? 
Will they a' return, our Hieland men ? 
Second-sighted Sandy looked fu wae, 
An' mothers grat, when they marched away, 
Wi' a hundred pipers, etc. 

O, wha' is foremost o' a', o' a' ; 
O, wha' does follow the blaw, the blaw, 
Bonnie Charlie, the King o' us a', hurra ! 
Wi' his hundred pipers an' a', an' a' ; 
His bonnet an' feather he 's wavin' high, 
His prancin' steed maist seems to fly, 
The nor' wind plays wi' his curlin' hair, 
While the pipers blew up an' unco flare, 
Wi' a hundred pipers, etc. 

The Esk was swollen sae red and sae deep, 
But shouther to shouther the brave lads keep, 
Two thousand swam o'er to fell English ground, 
An' danced themselves dry to the pibroch's sound. 
Dumfoundered the English saw — they saw, 



LADY NAIBNE AND HER SONGS. 125 

Dumfoundered they heard the blaw, the blaw ; 

Dumfoundered they a' ran awa', awa', 

From the hundred pipers an' a', an' a', 
Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a', 
Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a'. 
We '11 up an gie them a blaw, a blaw, 
Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a'. 

Burns, Hogg, and Lady Nairne all wrote songs 
to the beautiful air of Charlie is my Darling, em- 
bodying in each case the first verse of the unknown 
poet who originated the song. They are all beauti- 
ful, but the words of Lady Nairne have conquered 
in the popular ear, and taken final possession of 
the air. 

CHARLIE IS MY DARLING. 

'T was on a Monday morning, 

Right early in the year, 
When Charlie cam' to our town, 
The young Chevalier. 

Oh, Charlie is my darling, 
My darling, my darling, 
Oh, Charlie is my darling, 
The young Chevalier. 

As he cam' marching up the street 
The pipes played loud an' clear, 

An' a' the folks cam' running out 
To meet the Chevalier. 

Wi' Hieland bonnets on their heads, 
An' claymores bright an' clear, 



126 - LADY NA1BNE AND HER SONGS. 

They cam' to fight for Scotland's right 
An' the young Chevalier. 

They 've left their bonnie Highland hills, 

Their wives and bairnies dear, 
To draw the sword for Scotland's lord, 

The young Chevalier. 

Oh, there were mony beating hearts 

An' mony a hope an' fear, 
An' mony were the prayers sent up 
For the young Chevalier. 
Oh, Charlie is my darling, 
My darling, my darling, 
Oh, Charlie is my darling, 
The young Chevalier. 

There is one of Lady Nairne's songs not quite 
perfect, for one forced and faulty line in the re- 
frain, which has a higher touch of the imagination 
than any of the others. The influence of the magic 
of nature in the interpretation of human sorrow or 
gladness, and the wild mystery of the birds' melody 
upon the heart, which is characteristic of the high- 
est order of the folk-song, and which, in its irreg- 
ularity and simplicity, not less than the melody, 
which is nature's own voice, rather than the rhythm 
of art, is beyond the reach of any deliberate skill. 
It would be hard to find anything more perfect 
at once in its picture and its interpretation of the 
voice of nature in human words than — 



LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 127 

And then the burnie 's like the sea, 

Roarin' an' reamin' ; 
Nae wee bit sangster 's on the tree, 

But wild birds screamin'. 

While the sadness of human despair that follows 
and emphasizes the passion of the flood strikes 
the ear like a veritable wail in the loneliness and 
darkness. 

Bonnie ran the burnie down, 

Wandrin' an' windin'. 
Sweetly sang the birds above, 

Care never mindin'. 

The gentle summer wind 

Was their music saft an' kind, 

And it rockit them an' rockit them 
All in their bowers sae hie. 
Bonnie ran, etc. 

The mossy rock was there, 

An' the water lily fair, 
An' the little trout would sport about 

All in the sunny beam. 
Bonnie ran, etc. 

Tho' summer days be lang, 

An' sweet the birdies sang, 
The wintry night and chilly light 

Keep aye their eerie roun'. 
Bonnie ran, etc. 



128 LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 

An' then the burnie 's like a sea, 

Roarin' an' reamin' ; 
Nae wee bit sangster 's on the tree, 

But wild birds screamin'. 

Oh, that the past I might forget, 

Wandrin' an' weepin' ; 
Oh, that aneath the hillock green 

Sound I were sleepin'. 

In one other famous song, heard wherever Scotch 
music is sung, Lady Nairne interpreted the pathos, 
hardship, and suffering behind the strong, clear 
voices of the Newhaven fishwives, which may still 
be heard in the wynds and closes of Edinburgh 
as they march on their sturdy limbs with the heavy 
creels laden with the silvery fishes on their backs, 
and fill the air with their deep, melodious cry. 

CALLER HERRIN'. 

Wha '11 buy my caller herrin' ? 
They 're bonnie fish and halesome farin', 
Wha '11 buy my caller herrin', 
New drawn frae the Forth. 

When ye were sleepin' on your pillows, 
Dream'd ye aught o' our fine fellows, 
Darkling as they faced the billows 
A ? to fill the woven willows. 

Buy my caller herrin', 

New drawn frae the Forth. 



LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 129 

Wha '11 buy my caller herrin' ? 

They 're no bought without brave darin' ; 

Buy my caller herrin', 

Haled thro' wind and rain. 

Wha '11 buy my caller herrin' ? etc. 

Wha '11 buy my caller herrin' ? 
Oh, ye may call them vulgar f arin' ; 
Wives and mithers maist despairin' 
Ca' them the lives o' men. 

Wha '11 buy my caller herrin' ? 

They 're bonnie fish and halesome farin', 

Wha '11 buy my caller herrin', 

New drawn frae the Forth. 

There are other verses to Caller Herrin', but they 
were merely occasional, intended to serve as a ben- 
efit to Nathaniel Gow, the son of the famous fid- 
dler, Mel Gow, the composer of the air, who was 
seeking patronage in Edinburgh, and they only 
injure the effect of the first and perfect stanzas. 

The poetical work of Lady Nairne was smaller 
in bulk than that of her chief contemporaries, 
even than that of Allan Cunningham. She was 
without any personal literary ambition whatever, 
and her inspiration was smothered by domestic 
grief and an absorbing and narrow piety. A por- 
tion of what there is is also imperfect, ephemeral, 
and careless, but she has written one of the most 
perfect lyrics in the English language, and a num- 
ber of others, which, in their melody, their inter- 



130 LADY NAIRN E AND HER SONGS. 

pretation of simple emotion, their vividness and 
strength, and their power upon the heart as well 
as the ear, have a place which few have equaled 
and none have surpassed in the lyric treasures of a 
land more rich than all others in the voice of poetry 
speaking to the heart in song. 



SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON AND CELTIC 
POETRY. 

The great controversy over the genuineness of 
the Ossianic poems of James Macpherson, which 
existed during his lifetime and was carried on for a 
considerable period after his death, has died away 
without being settled. Opinions of eminent Celtic 
scholars still differ as to whether the so-called 
Gaelic originals of his poems, published after his 
death, were genuine transcripts from ancient 
poems, or were translations into the Gaelic from 
Macpherson's English composition made by his 
friends to conceal the fraud and maintain provin- 
cial pride. He himself never produced the originals 
of his poems, and took refuge in a silence which 
went far to confirm the impression of fraud and 
forgery. But whether he had any direct originals 
or not, and the weight of probability is that he had 
not, his poems were unquestionably founded on the 
vast mass of Celtic poetry and legend existing in 
Ireland and Scotland in tradition and manuscript. 
The names of his heroes, their characters and their 
exploits, are to be found in this poetry, and many 
of his most admired episodes and descriptions, like 



132 CELTIC POETRY. 

that of Ossian's address to the sun, and the de- 
scription of Cuchullin's chariot, were taken directly 
from it. , Whatever the amount of transformation 
and interpolation, and whatever the change in the 
literary style, from the plain and simple expressions 
of primitive poetry to the vague and rhetorical 
imagery of inflated artifice, were made by Macpher- 
son, he unquestionably preserved the pervading 
spirit of Celtic poetry, its melancholy, its sensitive- 
ness to the impressions of nature, and its lofty and 
humane spirit, and was the first to make it known 
to the world. Critics like Hazlitt and Matthew 
Arnold, who were impressed simply by its spirit 
of pure poetry, and the most accomplished Celtic 
scholars of a later day, have alike agreed upon in- 
ternal and external evidence as to the faithfulness 
of the reproduction of the spirit of Celtic poetry 
by Macpherson, and have regarded the faults of 
his literary style as those of the age, and his inter- 
pretation of the poems of Ossian by the spirit of 
the eighteenth century as not more faulty or less 
natural than Chapman's transfusion of Homer into 
the style of the Elizabethan era, or Pope's into 
that of Queen Anne. His great drawback was 
the suspicion of absolute fraud and forgery which 
attached to him, and which he was unable to dispel, 
from his mistake in not acknowledging in the be- 
ginning that his poems were derived from general 



CELTIC POETRY. 133 

tradition instead of being absolute translations from 
originals. But in spite of this discredit, which was 
more of a personal literary quarrel than a critical 
attack upon the quality of the poetry itself, its 
value was at once instinctively recognized as a new 
and original revelation, as an appeal to sensibilities 
in human nature which had been stifled by the nar- 
row and dry reasoning of English and Continental 
poetry at the time, and as a breath from the wide 
air of nature itself. It touched the European 
spirit, then struggling to emancipate itself from the 
swaddling bands of authority and artificial society, 
with electric power, and was a powerful influence 
in the emancipation both of literature and human 
action. Ossian profoundly affected the intellectual 
awakening of Goethe and was a favorite with Na- 
poleon, and throughout the whole of Europe its 
spirit was an inspiring and governing force. In 
English literature its effect was not less powerful, 
although less openly acknowledged owing to the 
discredit created by the charges of forgery, and 
both Byron's melancholy and Wordsworth's appre- 
ciation of the soul of nature were derived from this 
pervading spirit of ancient Celtic poetry. 

So far as the direct study of Celtic poetry was 
concerned the Ossianic controversy was unquestion- 
ably a misfortune. It threw a cloud of suspicion 
and discredit upon the genuine fragments which 



134 CELTIC POETRY '. 

remained, and discouraged the study which might 
otherwise have been given to them, so that, unques- 
tionably, some traditional Celtic poetry has been lost 
by the decay of the language as a living speech, 
and it is only in later years that enlightened schol- 
arship and patriotic feeling have led to the careful 
and appreciative study of the manuscript volumes 
which have survived time and neglect, for their in- 
herent literary and historical value, and to a con- 
sideration of the influence of the Celtic spirit upon 
English literature. They have been found to be 
of great value and interest, to possess elements of 
pure poetry of marked and original quality, and a 
spirit which has had a strong effect upon English 
literature. Nevertheless there has not been found 
in the remains of Celtic literature any single poem 
which in itself would compare with the Nibelungen 
Lied or with the Song of Roland, in epic form and 
constructiveness, in clearness of diction and drama- 
tic strength ; nor even any prose legend or narra- 
tive history, which would compare with the clear 
and vigorous character drawing and lucid narration 
of the Icelandic and Scandinavian Sagas. What 
would have been the case had the original poems 
and histories of the sixth century been preserved 
can only be conjectured. Those which now exist 
are only in the transcripts of the eleventh, twelfth, 
and thirteenth centuries, greatly transformed, al- 



CELTIC POETBY. 135 

tered, and confused in dates and characters, and 
bearing the marks of a great deterioration in style, 
like the degradation of Latin prose in its later era. 
The passages which competent Celtic scholars have 
pronounced from philological evidence to be of an 
earlier construction, are a good deal stronger as 
well as simpler in expression than those by which 
they are surrounded, and indicate that, if the ear- 
lier poetry had been preserved in its purity with- 
out being amplified and weakened by scholastic 
and artificial phraseology, it might have rivaled the 
early Teutonic poetry in force, directness and sim- 
plicity, and strength of construction. As it is, the 
Celtic poems and histories are not only confused 
and prolix with interminable genealogies and pro- 
verbial reflections, but are written in a style, with a 
redundance and complication of epithets, at once 
weakening and tiresome. Thus in an Irish his- 
tory of the Triumphs of Turlogh O'Brien, written 
in the thirteenth century, there is the following 
description of the dress and arms of a hero : — 

"His noble garment was first brought to him, 
viz., a strong, well-formed, close-ridged, defensively- 
furrowed, terrific, neat-bordered, new-made, and 
scarlet-red cassock of fidelity ; he expertly put on 
that gold-bordered garment, which covered him as 
far as from the lower part of his soft, fine, red- 
white neck, to the upper part of his expert, snow- 



136 CELTIC POETRY. 

white, round-knotted knee. Over that mantle he 
put on a full, strong, white-topped, wide-round, 
gold-bordered, straight, and parti-colored coat of 
mail, well-fitted, and ornamented with many curi- 
ous devices of exquisite workmanship. He put on 
a beautiful, thick, and saffron-colored belt of war, 
embellished with clasps and buckles set with pre- 
cious stones, and hung with golden tassels ; to this 
belt was hung his active and trusty lance, regularly 
cased in a tubic sheath, but that it was somewhat 
greater in height than the height of the sheath ; he 
squeezed the brilliant, gilt, and starry belt about 
the coat of mail; and a long, blue-edged, bright- 
steeled, sharp-pointed, broad-sided, active, white- 
backed, half-polished, monstrous, smooth-bladed, 
small-thick, and well-fashioned dagger was fixed to 
the tie of that embroidered and parti-colored belt ; 
a white, embroidered, full-wide, strong, and well- 
wove hood was put on him over his golden mail ; 
he himself laid on his head a strong-cased, spher- 
ical, towering, polished-shining, branch-engraved, 
long-enduring helmet ; he took his edged, smooth- 
bladed, letter-graved, destructive, sharp-pointed, 
fight-taming, sheathed, gold-guarded, and girded 
sword, which he tied fast in haste to his side." 

The confusion which exists in the transcripts of 
the ancient poems between the pagan mythology 
and the Christian faith, and the superposition of 



CELTIC POETRY. 137 

Latin learning and mediaeval thought, is also a 
great injury to the consecntiveness and vraisem- 
blance of the story, and the effect is as if the tale 
of the Nibelungen Lied had been told by a monk- 
ish chronicler with all the embellishments of a later 
faith and the ornaments of an artificial style. The 
poetry has not all perished from the earlier ori- 
ginals, and in many instances there is a vigor of 
narrative, a poetical power of description, and an 
elevation of sentiment, which shines through the 
amplification and verbiage, and redeems the prolix- 
ity and tediousness of the story ; but, as has been 
said, the prevailing impression is one of a corrupted 
and weakened, instead of a strong and original 
primitive poetry, and a literal translation of an 
Irish or Scotch Celtic poem or history is not likely 
to attract the general reader from its purely liter- 
ary quality. The poetry lies in a heap of dross, 
and must be painfully smelted out. 

The only way in which ancient Celtic poetry can 
be known and appreciated by the English reader, 
and have its effect in English literature, is by the 
presentation of its spirit and atmosphere, its essen- 
tial elements in local form and color, its character- 
istic phraseology and tone of thought in English 
poetry of original power as well as essential faith- 
fulness. The poet who is' to do this successfully 
must have, what Macpherson had not, a thorough 



138 CELTIC POETRY. 

knowledge of the language and an appreciation of 
its method as the expression of thought, be com- 
pletely saturated with the knowledge of the time, 
and possess the literary conscience and taste to be 
completely faithful to the original spirit. The 
most conspicuous example in our time of an attempt 
to reproduce the spirit of legendary romance in 
original poetry is, of course, The Idylls of the 
King, and the impress of a very thorough study 
and saturation of the spirit of the ancient chronicles 
is as visible as the exquisite substance of original 
poetry. But the stories of The Idylls of the King 
are based upon, rather than closely reproduce, the 
legends of Arthurian romance, and the spirit has 
been elevated and refined by that of modern poetry 
and the nature of Tennyson's own genius to essential 
unreality. They are like the pictures of Madonnas 
and mediaeval saints done by a modern painter of 
genius with all the skill and technique of art, but 
without the sense of devotion which shows through 
the ruder sketches of the earlier and greatly infe- 
rior painters, who were inspired by something more 
than merely artistic enthusiasm. It is needless to 
say that for a poet to possess the self-restraint to 
be entirely faithful to his originals, and aim mainly 
at reproducing their form as well as spirit, is more 
rare, and may be said to have less power, than one 
who creates an original structure of poetry upon the 



CELTIC POETRY. 139 

basis of ancient romance ; but lie has his function 
also, and may be something more than a mere trans- 
lator, as he gives his material shape in modern 
form and with the embellishments of his own gen- 
ius, while he yet preserves the ancient characteris- 
tics. He is like the skillful architect who restores 
a ruined castle to a habitable dwelling, clearing 
away the rubbish which has choked its portals and 
surrounded its walls, while preserving its ancient 
shape and structure, and blending his new materials 
with the old so that it seems a harmonious building. 
This is the work to which Sir Samuel Ferguson has 
devoted himself in his reproduction of Irish Celtic 
poetry, both ballad and epic, and particularly in his 
poem of Congal, which is a recreation of the bardic 
romance of the Battle of Moyra, and its introduc- 
tory Pre-Tale of the Banquet of Dunangay, prose 
versions which have been given by the eminent 
Celtic scholar, Dr. John O'Donovan, in the publica- 
tions of the Irish Archaeological Society. 

The battle of Moyra was an authentic historic 
event, and took place a. d. 637 between the forces 
of Domnal, king of Ireland, and those of Congal, 
sub-king of Ulster, and his allies from Scotland, 
Wales, England, Brittany, and Scandinavia. It is 
regarded by Celtic historians as the last struggle of 
the bardic and pagan party in Ireland against the 
newly established power of Christianity, for which 



140 CELTIC POETRY. 

a pretext rather than a cause was found in an al- 
leged slight of Domnal to Congal. The history, 
which is in prose interspersed with speeches and ex- 
hortations in verse in the usual manner of the bar- 
dic chronicles, was apparently written in its pres- 
ent form in the latter part of the eleventh century, 
and from earlier traditionary chronicles, which 
are now lost. Its style has a good deal of vigor 
and force, but is marked with the faults of confu- 
sion, and the redundance of descriptive epithets 
characteristic of the writers of the time. Its story 
is that Congal, having been invited by Domnal to 
a banquet at the royal house at Dunangay, was 
served with a hen's egg upon a wooden platter, in- 
stead of with a goose egg upon a silver dish, as 
were the remainder of the company, and, denoun- 
cing it as an unforgivable insult, departed to seek 
assistance from his relatives and allies in Great 
Britain and the Continent. Returning with these 
a great battle was fought on the plains of Moyra, 
which lasted for six days, and in which the foreign 
invaders were routed and Congal was killed. The 
principal heroes of the chronicle were historical 
personages, but there were others of which there 
is no definite knowledge, and who probably owed 
their origin to the imagination of the bards, as in 
the Iliad and the Nibelungen Lied. Sir Samuel 
Ferguson's poem of Congal follows the main 



CELTIC POETRY. 141 

narrative of events in the original chronicle, but 
with an addition in the shape of a love episode be- 
tween Lafinda, a sister of Sweeny, an Irish prince, 
and Congal, the introduction of several new char- 
acters, and of some supernatural episodes derived 
from the pagan mythology of Ireland. The narra- 
tive is made intelligible where it is obscure in the 
original, and incredible events, such as the chaining 
together of the warriors lest they should run away 
from each other, are omitted, while the tautology 
and verbiage of the language is eliminated. Its 
faithfulness as the reproduction of an ancient Celtic 
poem consists in the skill with which the character- 
istic style of language, its multiplied and doubled 
epithets, is renewed in English without the effect 
of archaism, and the reproduction of its heroic and 
primitive tone and spirit. Its original merits are 
the force and vigor of the narrative, the vivid de- 
scriptions of scenery, the strength and impressive- 
ness of the supernatural figures, the genuine in- 
spiration of battle in the combats, and the easy 
mastery of the "long, resounding line" in the 
verse. There is no modern poem which so thor- 
oughly reproduces the ancient form and spirit of a 
bygone age, and in which so complete and accurate 
an idea can be obtained of the element of a van- 
ished poetry as in Congal, and, as has been said, it 
is like a restoration in shape and substance of a 



142 CELTIC POETRY . 

ruined castle. The opening lines give a specimen 
of the style of the verse and the vigorous spirit of 
the measure : — 

The Hosting here of Congal Claen. 'T was loud lark-car- 
oling May 
When Congal, as the lark elate and radiant as the day, 
Rode forth from steep Rath-Keltar gate. 

Of the felicity with which these double descrip- 
tive epithets are used there are a thousand speci- 
mens, such as 

The white-maned, proud-neck-arching tide ; 

and they give the dominant characteristic of the 
style as in the original, with a grace and appropri- 
ateness which make them a natural part of the 
English language. In order to show how the Cel- 
tic narrative has been transformed into English 
poetry without losing its characteristic features, the 
two accounts of the episode in the battle in which 
Sweeny becomes smitten with a frenzy of fear by 
supernatural visitation may be compared. This 
is the original : — 

" Fits of giddiness came over him at the sight of 
the horrors, grimness, and rapidity of the Gaels ; at 
the looks, brilliance, and irksomeness of the foreign- 
ers ; at the rebounding, furious shouts and bellow- 
ings of the various embattled tribes on both sides, 
rushing against and coming into collision with one 



CELTIC POETBY. 143 

another. Huge, flickering, horrible, aerial phan- 
toms rose up, so that they were in curved, com- 
mingled crowds tormenting him; and in dense, 
rustling, clamorous, life-tormenting hordes, without 
ceasing; and in dismal, regular, aerial, storm- 
shrieking, hovering, fiend-like hosts, constantly in 
motion, shrieking and howling as they hovered 
about them in every direction, to cow and dismay 
cowards and soft youths, but to invigorate and 
mightily rouse champions and warriors ; so that 
from the uproar of the battle, the frantic pranks of 
the demons, and the clashing of arms, the sound of 
heavy blows reverberating on the points of heroic 
spears, and keen edges of swords, and the war-like 
borders of broad shields, the noble hero Suibne 
was filled and intoxicated with tremor, horror, 
panic, dismay, fickleness, unsteadiness, fear, flighti- 
ness, giddiness, terror, and imbecility ; so that there 
was not a joint or member of him from foot to 
head which was not converted into a confused, 
shaking mass, from the effect of fear and the panic 
of dismay. His feet trembled as if incessantly 
shaken by the force of a stream ; his arms and 
various-edged weapons fell from him, the power of 
his hands having been enfeebled and relaxed 
around them, and rendered incapable of holding 
them. The inlets of hearing were quickened and 
expanded by the horrors of lunacy ; the vigor of 



144 CELTIC POETRY. 

his brain in the cavities of his head was destroyed 
by the clamors of the conflict; his heart shrunk 
within him with the panic of dismay ; his speech 
became faltering from the giddiness of imbecility ; 
his very soul fluttered with hallucination, and with 
many and various phantoms, for that was the root 
and true basis of fear itself. He might be com- 
pared on this occasion to a salmon in a weir, or to 
a bird after being caught in the strait prison of a 
crib." 

The following is the way in which this is ren- 
dered in Congal, Sweeny's offense having con- 
sisted in drowning the hermit Ere in the Boyne : — 

To Sweeny as the hosts drew near, ere yet the fight should 

join, 
Seemed still, as if between them rolled the foam-strewed, 

tawny Boyne. 
And as the swiftly nearing hosts consumed the narrowing 

space, 
And arrow flights and javelin casts, and sword strokes came 

in place, 
Through all the rout of high-raised hands, and wrathful, 

glaring eyes, 
Erc's look of wrath, and lifted hand before him seemed to 

rise, 
Through all the hard-rebounding din from breasts of Gaels 

and Gauls, 
That jarred against the vault of heaven, when clashed the 

brazen walls, 
Through all the clangorous battle-calls, and death shouts 

hoarse and high, 



CELTIC POETRY. 145 

Erc's shriller curse he seemed to hear and Erc's despairing 

cry. 
Much did the hapless warrior strive to shake from breast 

and brain 
The illusion and the shameful wish fast-rising ; but in vain ; 
The wish to fly seized all his limbs ; the stronger dread of 

shame, 
Contending with the wish to fly, made spoil of all his frame. 
His knees beneath him wavered as if shaken by the stress 
Of a rapid running river ; his heart, in fear's excess, 
Sprang to and fro within him, as a wild bird newly caged, 
Or a stream-ascending salmon in a strong weir's trap en- 
gaged. 

Some of the single combats of the heroes, follow- 
ing the details of the narrative, are described with 
Homeric vigor, and the address of the King of 
Lochlan to the invading army, disheartened by 
apparitions, has the fire and spirit, as well as the 
form, of the Scandinavian runic verse : — 

This is my sentence : 
Fairy nor Fire-Drake 
Keep back the Kemper 
At home, in the burg, 
Leaves he the maiden 
Boon for the bridal ; 
Abroad, on the holme, 
Leaves he the harvest, 
Ripe for the reaper ; 
The bowl, on the board, 
In the hall of the banquets, 
Leaves he untasted, 



146 CELTIC POETBY. 

When lances uplift 
The foe in the field. 
Noting the Norsemen 
Out on the water-throng, 
Hark ! how the Eagle 
Vaunts to the Vulture. 
Spread the wing, Scald-Neck, 
Says she, and screams she ; 
Seest thou the Sea-Kings 
Borne on the gannet-bath, 
Going to garner 
Every bird's eyrie ? 
Fell from her fishy-perch 
Answers the Bald-Beak, 
Scream no more, little one, 
Feeders are coming. 
Hearkening their colloquy, 
Grins the grey beast, 
The wolf on the wold. 
This is my sentence : 
These are the Norseman's 
Pandect and canon. 
Thyrfing is thirsty ; 
Quern-biter hungers ; 
Shield-walker wearieth 
Shut in the scabbard. 
This is my sentence : 
Bring us to battle. 

Perhaps, however, the greatest strength in Congal 
will be found in the dealing with the apparitions, 
the gigantic and malign demons, who haunt the hill 
and the stream, and represent the primitive imagin- 



CELTIC POETRY. 147 

ings of a race not yet emancipated from the terrors 
of the supernatural in the forces and forms of na- 
ture. These figures of ancient Irish poetry, the 
Herdsman Borcha, who swept down Finn's fortress 
with his staff, and counts the kine in the uncon- 
quered lands, the Giant Walker, who strides 
angrily around the hostile camp at night, and the 
Washer at the Ford, who dabbles with slain men's 
heads, live again in Ferguson's verse with their 
original reality and terror, and amid the setting of 
natural scenery from which their phantoms were 
created. This is the picture of the Giant Walker, 
whose apparition presaged doom to Cougal at his 
first night's camp : — 

Around the Mound of Sighs 
They filled the woody-sided vale ; but no sweet sleep their 



Refreshed that night ; for all the night, around their echo- 
ing camp, 
Was heard continuous from the hills a sound as of a tramp 
Of giant footsteps ; but so thick the white mist lay around 
None saw the Walker save the King. He, starting at the 

sound, 
Called to his foot his fierce red hound ; athwart his shoulders 

cast 
A shaggy mantle, grasped his spear, and through the moon- 
light passed 
Alone up dark Ben-Boli's heights, towards which, above the 

woods, 
With sound as when at close of eve the noise of falling floods 
Is borne to shepherd's ear remote on stilly upland lawn, 



148 CELTIC POETRY. 

The steps along the mountain-side with hollow sound came on. 
Fast beat the hero's heart ; and close, down-crouching by his 

knee 
Trembled the hound, while through the haze, huge as through 

mists at sea, 
The week-long sleepless mariner descries some mountain 

cape, 
Wreck-infamous, rise on his lee, appeared a monstrous shape 
Striding impatient, like a man much grieved, who walks 

alone 
Considering of a grievous wrong ; down from his shoulders 

thrown 
A mantle skirted stiff with soil, splashed from the miry- 
ground, 
At every stride against his calves struck with as loud rebound 
As makes the mainsail of a ship brought up along the blast, 
When with the coil of all its ropes it beats the sounding 

mast. 
So, striding vast, the giant passed ; the King held fast his 

breath ; 
Motionless save his throbbing heart ; and still and chill as 

death 
Stood listening while a second time the giant took his round 
Of all the camp ; but when, at length, the third time the 

sound 
Came up, and through the haze a third time huge and dim 
Rose out the Shape, the valiant hound sprang forth and 

challenged him. . 
And forth, disdaining that a dog should put him so to shame, 
Sprang Congal and essayed to speak. 

" Dread shadow, stand ! Proclaim 
What wouldst thou that thou thus around my camp shouldst 

keep 



CELTIC POETBY. 149 

Thy troublous vigil, banishing the wholesome gift of sleep 
From all our eyes, who, though inured to dreadful sounds 

and sights 
By land and sea, have never yet in all our perilous nights 
Lain the ward of such a guard." 

The Shape made answer none, 
But with stern wafture of his hand went angrier striding on, 
Shaking the earth with heavier steps. Then Congal on his 

track 
Sprang fearless. 

" Answer me, thou Churl," he cried, " I bid thee back." 
But, while he spoke, the giant's cloak around his shoulders 

grew 
Like a black-bulged thunder-cloud ; and sudden out there 

flew 
From all its angry, swelling folds, with uproar unconfined, 
Direct against the King's pursuit a mighty blast of wind : 
Loud flapped the mantle, tempest-lined, while fluttering 

down the gale, 
As leaves in Autumn, man and hound were swept into the vale, 
And heard through all the huge uproar, through startled 

Dalaray, 
The giant went with stamp and clash, departing south away. 

A conspicuous feature of the excellence of Congal 
as an original poem is the vividness and faithful- 
ness with which the natural scenery of Ireland is 
painted. The dark and barren hills, the tawny and 
foam-flecked streams, the misty seas, the vast and 
lonely raths and burial places of heroes, the emerald 
fields bathed with dew and glittering with sunshine, 
all the characteristics of Irish scenery, with their 



150 CELTIC POETRY. 

soul of meaning, which appeals to the heart as well 
as the outward form to the eye, are depicted with 
remarkable power, and make a living element in 
which the figures move. Almost every page has a 
touch of this skill, and every aspect of field and sea 
and sky is enlivened. As fine a specimen as any is 
this picture of an autumn champaign from a hill- 
top in Leinster : — 

Such as one 
Beholds, and thankful-hearted he, who casts abroad his gaze 
O'er some rich tillage country-side, when mellow autumn 

days 
Gild all the sheaf y food-full stooks, and, broad before him 

spread, — 
He looking landward from the prow of some great sea-cape's 

head 
Bray or Ben-Edar — sees beneath in silent pageant grand 
Slow fields of sunshine spread o'er fields of rich, corn-bearing 

land ; 
Red glebe and meadow-margin green commingling to the 

view, 
With yellow stubble, browning woods, and upland tracts of 

blue ; — 
Then, sated with the pomp of fields, turns seaward to the 

verge 
Where, mingling with the murmuring wash made by the 

far-down surge, 
Comes up the clangorous song of birds unseen, that, low be- 
neath 
Poised off the rock, fly underfoot, and, mid the blossoming 

heath, 



CELTIC POETRY. 151 

And mint-sweet herb that loves the ledge rare-aired, at ease 

reclined, 
Surveys the wide, pale-heaving floor crisped by a curling 

wind ; 
With all its shifty shadowing belts, and chasing scopes of 

green, 
Sun strewn, foam-freckled, sail-embossed, and blackening 

squalls between, 
And slant, cerulean-skirted showers, that with a drowsy 

sound, 
Heard inward, of ebullient waves, stalk all the horizon round. 

With its faithfulness to tone and character, its 
skillful reproduction of style and language, its force 
and vigor of narrative, its forms of mythologic 
mysticism and its appreciation of the magic of na- 
ture, Congal is the most perfect reproduction of 
the form and spirit of ancient Celtic poetry in 
existence, and from it the English reader, who is 
not a Celtic student, can obtain the best knowledge 
of its pervading elements. 

Congal is not the only contribution made by Sir 
Samuel Ferguson to Celtic poetry. The Lays of 
the Western Gael are a series of ballads founded 
on events in Celtic history and derived from the 
early chronicles and poems. They are original in 
form and substance, the ballad form and measure 
being unknown to the early Celtic poets of Ireland, 
but they preserve in a wonderful degree the ancient 
spirit, and give a picture of the ancient times with 



152 CELTIC POETRY. 

all the art of truth and verity. As I have said 
elsewhere 1 : — 

" To have done this clearly and completely, so 
that the past lives again and is felt by the instinct 
of nature to be true and real, free from confusion 
and extravagance, the imperfections of utterance in 
a people just learning to express themselves, the 
alien and antique methods of thought, through the 
inevitably imperfect knowledge of a language half 
faded and changed, while preserving not only the 
terms of expression but the characteristics of 
thought and feeling, seems a no less difficult task 
than to trace and interpret the worn letters and 
half-effaced inscriptions on the Ogham stones, and 
could only have been done by the genius of the 
great poet vivifying the labor of the profound 
scholar. Finally, the impress of the past as it is 
visible to the present, the effect of the gray cairn 
and grassy burial mound, and almost the last fad- 
ing of the tokens of the aboriginal race into the 
bosom of nature, and the perception of its spirit 
amid the light and bustle of the day, 

The loneliness and awe secure 
of the forgotten dead, is the task of the modern 
poet speaking in his own time and to his own gen- 
eration of the past." 

1 Introduction to popular edition of Lays of the Western Gael, 
Dublin, 1888. 



CELTIC POETRY. 153 

These ballads have a solemnity of measure like 
the voice of one of the ancient bards chanting of 

Old, forgotten, far-off things 
And battles long ago, 

and they are clothed with the mists of a melan- 
choly age. They include such subjects as The 
Tain Quest, the search of the bard for the lost lay 
of the great cattle raid of Queen Maev of Con- 
naught, and its recovery by invocation from the 
voice of its dead author arising in misty form 
above his grave ; The Healing of Conall Carnach, 
a story of violated sanctuary and its punishment ; 
The Welshmen of Tyrawly, one of the most spirited 
and original, and which has been pronounced by 
Mr. Swinburne as among the finest of modern bal- 
lads, telling of a cruel mulct inflicted upon the 
members of a Welsh colony in Ireland and its ven- 
geance, and other incidents in early Irish history. 
The verses on Aideen's Grave are a characteristic 
specimen of the tone and spirit of these ballads. 
The author's introductory note says : — 

" Aideen, daughter of Angus of Ben Edar (now 
the Hill of Howth), died of grief for the loss of her 
husband Oscar, son of Ossian, who was slain at the 
battle of Gavra (Gowra near Tara in Meath) a. d. 
284. Oscar was entombed in the rath, or earthen 
fortress, that occupied part of the field of battle, 



154 CELTIC POETRY. 

the rest of the slain being cast in a pit outside. 
Aideen is said to have been buried on Howth, near 
the mansion of her father, and poetical tradition 
represents the Fenian heroes as present at her ob- 
sequies. The cromlech in Howth Park is supposed 
to have been her sepulchre." 

AIDEEN'S GRAVE. 

They heaved the stones ; they heaped the cairn. 

Said Ossian, "In a queenly grave 
We leave her, 'mong her fields of fern 

Between the cliff and wave." 

The cliff behind stands clear and bare, 

And bare, above, the heathery steep 
Scales the clear heaven's expanse, to where 

The Danaan Druids sleep. 

And all the sands that, left and right, 

The grassy isthmus-ridge confine, 
In yellow bars lie bare and bright 

Among the sparkling brine. 

A clear pure air pervades the scene, 

In loneliness and awe secure, 
Meet spot to sepulchre a Queen, 

Who in her life was pure. 

Here far from camp and chase removed, 

Apart in Nature's quiet room, 
The music that alive she loved 

Shall cheer her in the tomb. 



CELTIC POETRY. 155 

The humming of the noontide bees, 

The lark's loud carol all day long, 
And, borne on evening's salted breeze, 

The clanking sea-birds' song 

Shall round her airy chamber float, 

And with the whispering winds and streams, 

Attune to Nature's tenderest note 
The tenor of her dreams. 

And oft at tranquil eve's decline, 

When full tides lap the Old Green Plain, 

The lowing Moynalty's kine 
Shall round her breathe again. 

In sweet remembrance of the days 

When, duteous in the lowly vale, 
Unconscious of my Oscar's gaze, 

She filled the fragrant pail. 

And, duteous, from the running brook, 
Drew water for the bath ; nor deem'd 

A king did on her labor look, 
And she a fairy seemed. 

But when the wintry frosts begin, 

And in their long-drawn, lofty flight 
The wild geese with their airy din 

Distend the ear of night. 

And when the fierce De Danaan ghosts, 
At midnight from their peak come down. 

When all around the enchanted coasts 
Despairing strangers drown ; 



156 CELTIC POETRY. 

When mingling with the wreckful wail 
From low Clontarf's wave-trampled floor, 

Comes booming up the burthened gale 
The angry Sand Bull's roar ; 

Or, angrier than the sea, the shout 
Of Erin's hosts in wrath combined 

When Terror heads Oppression's rout 
And Freedom cheers behind : — 

Then o'er our lady's placid dream, 

When safe from storms she sleeps, may steal 

Such joy as may not misbeseem 
A queen of men to feel. 

Such thrill of free, defiant pride, 

As rapt her in her battle car 
At Gavra, when by Oscar's side 

She rode the ridge of war. 

Exulting, down the shouting troops, 

And through the thick confronting kings, 

With hands on all their javelin loops 
And shafts on all their strings ; 

E'er closed the inseparable crowds 
No more to part for me, and show, 

As bursts the sun through scattering clouds 
My Oscar issuing so. 

No more, dispelling battle's gloom, 
Shall son to me from fight return ; 

The great green rath's ten-acred tomb 
Lies heavy on his urn. 



CELTIC POETRY. 157 

A cup of bodkin-pencilled clay 

Holds Oscar ; mighty heart and limb 

One handful now of ashes grey : 
And she has died for him. 

And here, hard by her natal bower 

On lone Ben-Edar's side we strive 
With lifted rock and sign of power 

To keep her name alive. 

That, while from circling year to year, 

Her Ogham-lettered stone is seen, 
The Gael shall say, " Our Fenians here 

Entombed their loved Aideen. 

The Ogham from her pillar stone 

In tract of time will wear away; 
Her name at last be only known 

In Ossian's echoed lay. 

The long-forgotten lay I sing 

May only ages hence revive, 
(As eagle with a wounded wing 

To soar again might strive.) 

Imperfect, in an alien speech, 

When, wandering here, some child of chance 
Through pangs of keen delight shall reach 

The gift of utterance, — 

To speak the air, the sky to speak, 

The freshness of the hill to tell, 
When, roaming bare Ben-Edar's peak 

And Aideen' s briary dell, 



158 CELTIC POETRY. 

And gazing on the Cromlech vast, 
And on the mountain and the sea, 

Shall catch communion with the past 
And mix himself with me. 

Child of the Future's doubtful night, 

Whate'er your speech, whoe'er your sires, 

Sing while you may with frank delight 
The song your hour inspires. 

Sing while you may, nor grieve to know 
The song you sing shall also die ; 

Atharna's lay has perished so, 
Though once it thrilled the sky. 

Above us, from his rocky chair 
There, where Ben-Edar's landward crest 

O'er eastern Bregia bends, to where 
Dun-Almon crowns the west : 

And all that felt the fretted air, 

Throughout the song-distempered clime, 

Did droop, till Leinster's suppliant prayer 
Appeased the vengeful rhyme. 

Ah, me, or e'er the hour arrive 
Shall bid my long-forgotten tones, 

Unknown One, on your lips revive, 
Here, by these moss-grown stones, 

What change shall o'er the scene have cross'd 
What conquering lords anew have come ; 

What lore-armed, mightier Druid host 
From Gaul or distant Rome ! 



CELTIC POETRY. 159 

What arts of death, what ways of life, 
What creeds unknown to bard or seer, 

Shall round your careless steps be rife, 
Who pause and ponder here : 

And, haply, where yon curlew calls 

Athwart the marsh, 'mid groves and bowers 

See rise some mighty chieftain's halls 
With unimagined towers : 

And baying hounds and coursers bright, 
And burnish't cars of dazzling sheen, 

With courtly train of dame and knight, 
Where now the fern is green. 

Or by yon prostrate altar stone 

May kneel, perchance, and free from blame, 
Hear holy men with rites unknown 

New names of God proclaim. 

Let change as may the name of Awe, 

Let right surcease and altar fall, 
The same one God remains, a law 

Forever and for all. 

Let change as may the face of earth, 

Let alter all the social frame, 
For mortal men the ways of birth 

And death are still the same. 

And still, as life and time wear on, 

The children of the waning days 
(Though strength be from their shoulders gone 

To lift the loads we raise) 



160 CELTIC POETRY. 

Shall weep to do the burial rites 

Of lost ones loved ; and fondly found 

In shadow of the gathering nights 
The monumental mound. 

Farewell, the strength of men is worn ; 

The night approaches dark and chill ; 
Sleep till, perchance, an endless morn 

Descend the glittering hill " — 

Of Oscar and Aideen bereft 

So Ossian sang. The Fenians sped 

Three mighty shouts to heaven ; and left 
Ben-Edar to the dead. 

The spirit of Ossian, the woe and desolation of 
a mortal world, and the resigned but not bitter 
sense of the vanity of all things, lives in this sol- 
emn elegy. 

The charming lyrics of the later Irish Celtic 
poetry, which succeeded that of the bards, and 
were the voices of the peasant people themselves 
and of the professional descendants of the bards, 
the itinerant poets and musicians, who wandered 
from house to house with their harps, singing the 
praises of their entertainers, and were not extinct 
until the end of the last century, have found an 
adequate interpreter in Sir Samuel Ferguson. As 
in his reproductions of the bardic poetry, he has 
been able to seize the very spirit of these songs, 
their intoxication of love, their breath of hopeless 



CELTIC POETRY. 161 

longing and misfortune, the characteristics of the 
race and the results of their cruel fate at the hands 
of alien conquerors, and to interpret it in measures 
as melodious as the sad and sweet old airs, which are 
the most valuable gift which the intellectual life of 
Celtic Ireland has bestowed upon posterity. The 
genuine Irish melodies are to be found in these 
lyrics, which interpret the spirit as well as the lan- 
guage of the Celtic poets, and not in the rococo 
songs of Moore, in which artificial sentiment is 
tricked out in a mechanical melody, and in which 
the atmosphere of the drawing-room takes the place 
of the free air of the hillside. Of these Celtic lyrics 
the greater number have been lost, the airs alone 
surviving, but those which remain show how strong, 
sensitive, and impassioned was the poetic spirit of 
the Irish Celtic people, and which, but for the mis- 
fortunes of the nation, might have left as rich a 
treasury of lyric song as the Scotch. The follow- 
ing is a specimen of the impassioned spirit of these 
songs, almost an improvisation, the very cry of the 
heart rinding vent at the lips. It is entitled Cean 
Dubh Deelish — The Dear Black Head. 

Put your head, darling, darling, darling, 
Your darling black head my heart above ; 

Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance, 
Who with heart in breast could deny you love ? 

Oh, many and many a young girl for me is pining, 



162 CELTIC POETRY. 

Letting her locks of gold to the cold wind free, 
For me the foremost of our gay young fellows ; 

But I 'd leave a hundred, pure love, for thee : 
Then put your head, darling, darling, darling, 

Your darling black head my heart above ; 
Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance, 

Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love ? 

The verses entitled The Fair Hair'd Girl ex- 
press with great sweetness the sense of woe and 
sorrow which forms the burden of so much of the 
Celtic poetry, and which is only relieved by occa- 
sional flashes of intoxicated merriment with the 
glass of whiskey for its stimulus and inspiration. 

THE FAIR HAIR'D GIRL. 

The sun has set, the stars are still, 
The red moon hides behind the hill ; 
The tide has left the brown beach bare, 
The birds have fled the upper air ; 
Upon her branch the lone cuckoo 
Is chanting still her sad adieu ; 
And you, my fair hair'd girl, must go 
Across the salt sea under woe. 

I through love have learned three things, 
Sorrow, sin, and death it brings, 
Yet day by day my heart within 
Dares shame and sorrow, death and sin ; 
Maiden, you have aim'd the dart 
Rankling in my ruin'd heart ; 
Maiden, may the God above 
Grant you grace to grant me love. 



CELTIC POETRY. 163 

Sweeter than the viol's string, 
And the notes that blackbirds sing ; 
Brighter than the dewdrops rare 
Is the maiden, wondrous fair ; 
Like the silver swans at play 
Is her neck, as bright as day ; 
Woe is me, that e'er my sight 
Dwelt on charms so deadly bright. 

Among the sweetest and most famous of the old 
Irish airs is that entitled The Coolun or Head of 
Clustering Tresses, one of the charming personifi- 
cations of female beauty of which Irish poetry is 
full. Several sets of words remain to this air of 
which Ferguson has translated the following : — 

THE COOLUN. 

Oh, had you seen the Coolun, 

Walking down by the cuckoo's street, 
With the dew of the meadow shining 

On her milk-white twinkling feet, 
My love she is and my cooleen oge, 

And she dwells at Bal'nagar ; 
And she bears the palm of beauty bright 

From the fairest that in Erin are. 

In Bal'nagar is the Coolun, 

Like the berry on the bough her cheek ; 

Bright beauty dwells forever 

On her fair neck and ringlets sleek ; 

Oh, sweeter is her mouth's soft music 
Than the lark or thrush at dawn, 



164 CELTIC POETRY. 

Or the blackbird in the greenwood singing 
Farewell to the setting sun. 

Rise up, rny boy, make ready 

My horse, for I forth would ride, 
To follow the modest damsel, 

Where she walks on the green hillside. 
For, ever since our youth were we plighted, 

In faith, troth, and wedlock true — 
She is sweeter to me nine times over 

Than organ or cuckoo ! 

For, ever since my childhood 

I loved the fair and darling child ; 
But our people came between us, 

And with lucre our pure love defiled ; 
Oh, my woe it is, and my bitter pain, 

And I weep it night and day, 
That the cooleen baton of my early love 

Is torn from my heart away. 

Sweetheart and faithful treasure, 

Be constant still, and true, 
Nor for want of herds and houses 

Leave one who would ne'er leave you ; 
I pledge you the blessed Bible, 

Without and eke within, 
That the faithful God will provide for us, 

Without thanks to kith or kin. • 

Oh, love, do you remember, 
When we lay all night alone, 

Beneath the ash in the winter-storm, 
When the oak-wood round did groan ? 



CELTIC POETRY. 165 

No shelter then from the blast had we, 

The bitter blast or sleet, 
But your gown to wrap about our heads, 

And my coat round our feet. 

The main literary work of Sir Samuel Ferguson 
was devoted to this revivification of the spirit of 
ancient Celtic poetry, in spite of a highly success- 
ful debut as an English poet in The Forging of the 
Anchor, which at once took its place among those 
poems that are the familiar treasures of the peo- 
ple, and in this he was doubtless governed by 
something of patriotic spirit as well as by natural 
predilection. His work is not great in quantity, 
and he treasured his inspiration and perfected his 
workmanship with careful pains. Its result is to 
give a reproduction of the pervading elements of 
Irish Celtic poetry in English form with almost ab- 
solute perfection, and imbued with a spirit of origi- 
nal genius. In his poems, rather than in Macpher- 
son's Ossian or in the literal translations, will the 
modern reader find the voice of the ancient Celtic 
bards speaking to the intelligence of to-day in their 
own tones without false change and dilution, or the 
confusion and dimness of an ancient language. 
The value of this work has not yet been fully ap- 
preciated by literary critics, but there is no doubt 
in my mind but that it eventually will be.. 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

One of the most extraordinary and painful lives 
in literary history was that of William Thorn of In- 
verury, Scotland. There have been Scottish poets 
before and since Burns who have been bred in pov- 
erty and distress, and in whose lives the flowers of 
poetry have bloomed amid the most depressing and 
uncongenial circumstances. There have been croft- 
ers, shepherds, farm laborers, tailors, weavers, and 
shoemakers, servant lassies and old wives, who 
have given expression to their feelings in verse and 
song, with more or less skill and success, and testi- 
fied to the strength of the national genius which 
has made Scotland so peculiarly the land of song, 
and filled the lower bed of bracken and furze in 
which the higher and rarer flowers of Scottish 
minstrelsy have stood preeminent. And the his- 
tory of the minor Scottish poets is full of the 
homely pathos of unrequited toil, of pinching pov- 
erty, and of hopeless struggles with life, redeemed 
by honest virtue, patience, and thrift, or clouded 
with still deeper misfortune, and absolutely and 
irredeemably wrecked by dissipation and improvi- 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 167 

dence. But upon none, in whom the divine spark 
of genius existed, did the burdens of life fall more 
heavily than upon William Thorn, or the tragedies 
of existence reach a blacker depth of misery. The 
story has been told by himself in The Rhymes and 
Recollections of a Handloom Weaver, his only vol- 
ume, in nervous and vigorous prose, bearing traits 
of the declamatory style of Ebenezer Elliot and 
the radical writers of his school, but marked by 
native originality and strength. It has more than 
a personal value, as illustrating the condition of 
the life of factory hands in Scotland, when ma- 
chines had multiplied to the complete degradation 
of labor, and when it was simply a question with 
the mill owners of extracting the largest amount of 
work for the smallest wages from the operatives, 
and before the government had interfered to reg- 
ulate the hours of labor within endurable limits, 
and secure some of the conditions of health to the 
mill hands. A more appalling picture of hopeless 
poverty and starvation, and physical and moral deg- 
radation, has never been given in the annals of 
the civilized world, and of its truth there is abun- 
dant evidence in the writings of contemporary 
workingmen in England and Scotland, and in the 
testimony which led to the passage of the Factory 
Regulation acts by the English Parliament. 

William Thorn was born in 1798 of parents 



168 WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

steeped in poverty, in a tenement in one of the nar- 
row closes of Aberdeen, and at the age of ten be- 
gan his apprenticeship to life in a cotton factory. 
At the age of fifteen or sixteen he entered the 
" School Hill Factory," — a building since swept 
away, — as a weaver hand, and remained there for 
seventeen years. The wages of the best operatives 
averaged through good and bad times from six to 
nine shillings weekly, and of the second-class from 
three to five shillings. The daily hours of labor 
were fourteen. What that meant, not in poverty, 
but in absolute want of food, warmth, and the 
means for the sustenance of life, the degradation 
of rags, the shutting out of all glimpses of heaven 
and earth, leaving the only alleviation to the 
hours of toil at the rattling machines, and the 
squalid suffering in the reeking tenements, in 
the cheap and fiery stimulants of the taprooms, 
can be only faintly imagined. An inheritance of 
bad habits had also descended to the weaving 
class. When the factories were first established 
in 1770, after the invention of the spinning jenny, 
the wages of skillful workmen were forty shillings 
a week, and the operatives usually remained drunk 
from Saturday night until Wednesday morning, 
wore frilled shirts and powdered hair, sported 
canes, and quoted Volney in their discussions on 
the rights of man in the taprooms. The overplus 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVEB POET. 169 

of labor gradually reduced the wages to the starva- 
tion point, while the habits of dissipation and reck- 
lessness remained as characteristic of the craft. 
Thorn gives a most affecting picture of the lives 
and thoughts of these men, many of them, strong 
with native intellect and passion, condemned to a 
life of unending servitude and degradation, too 
ragged to dare to enter a church, even if they 
wished, and getting their only glimpse of nature in 
the garden of Gordon's Hospital, which was open 
on the Sunday holiday, while the whiskey shop 
gave them their only taste of joy and exhilaration ; 
and yet who had a native feeling for poetry, repeat- 
ing the verses of Burns and particularly of Tan- 
nahill, their brother weaver, as they tended their 
looms, and applauding the poets and singers in their 
own ranks, whose rude verses expressed their feel- 
ings or appealed to their sympathies in the gather- 
ings in the taprooms. The moral influences of such 
a life, where three or four hundred men and women 
were herded together in common workrooms was 
also very bad, and many a young girl dated her 
ruin in life, bringing additional desolateness to the 
miserable home, from the promiscuous association, 
and being barred out into the streets with a heavy 
fine for failing to be at the factory door at its open- 
ing in the early morning. How virtue, morality, 
or any of the decency and self-respect of humanity 



170 WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

could exist at all in such a life may be considered 
a marvel, and it is a proof of the inherent strength 
of the Scottish character and its inherited virtues 
that these factories were not greater plague spots 
than they actually were, and that honest lives and 
human affections flourished at all. In a poem, en- 
titled Whisperings to the Unwashed, in the fiercely 
declamatory style of the Corn Law Rhymer, Thorn 
draws a grim picture of the awakening of the 
weavers at the call of the town drum, used for that 
purpose in the smaller burghs, at six o'clock in the 
bleak and dark Northern mornings. 

Rubadub, rubadub, row-dow-dow ! 

Hark how he waukens the Weavers now ; 

Who lie belaired in a dreamy steep — 

A mental swither, 'tween death and sleep, 

Wi' hungry wame and hopeless heart, 

Their food no feeding, their sleep no rest ; 

Arouse ye, ye sunken, unravel your rags, 

No coin in your coffers, no meal in your bags. 

Yet cart, barge, and wagon, with load after load, 

Creak, mockfully passing your breadless abode. 

The stately stalk of Ceres bears, 

But not for you the bursting ears. 

In vain to you the lark's lov'd note, 

For you no summer breezes float, 

Grim winter through your hovel pours — 

Dull, dim, and breathless vapour yours. 

The nobler Spider weaves alone, 

And feels the little web his own, 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 171 

His home, his fortress, foul or fair, 
No factory whipper swaggers there. 
Should ruffian wasp or taunting fly- 
Touch his lov'd lair, 't is touch and die ! 
Supreme in rags, ye weave, in tears, 
The shining robe your murderer wears, 
Till worn at last to the very " waste," 
A hole to die in at the best ; 
And, dead, the session saints begrudge ye 
The two-three deals in death to lodge ye, 
And grudge the grave, wherein to drop ye. 
And grudge the very muck to hap ye. 

All this bitterness had reason and fact to excuse 
it, and it is a wonder that such feelings, fermenting 
in strong minds, did not lead to more serious con- 
sequences than taproom talk and the formation of 
Chartist clubs. 

In such surroundings, what was the character 
and career of Thorn himself ? An active mind led 
him to the perusal of such books as came in his 
way, and a poetical temperament made him 
deeply sensitive to the suffering and degradation 
of his condition, while it gave him a stimulus to- 
ward the fleeting pleasures of dissipation and the 
glow of sociability and popularity among his fel- 
lows. He was without the determined energy to 
rise above his condition, which might have suc- 
ceeded had an exceptional strength been allied 
with his mental gifts, in spite of the forlorn circum- 



172 WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

stances ; and he appears to have been, if not con- 
tent, at least to have submitted to be only the pop- 
ular genius among the workmen of his factory, and 
the leader in the taproom gatherings with his so- 
cial and musical gifts. He wrote songs in imita- 
tion of those which he heard, one of which, to his 
great delight, appeared in the poet's corner of an 
Aberdeen newspaper. The story which he tells 
is that on the morning after the poem had been 
dropped into the mail box, he and a companion 
waited around the door of the publication office, 
endeavoring in vain to induce some charitable pur- 
chaser to let them have a peep at the contents of 
the paper, only succeeding at last by crowding the 
holder of a copy into an entry way and examining 
the columns by force, being absolutely without the 
penny with which to buy one. But this success 
did not stimulate him with any hope of advantage 
by literature, and he regarded his gift of song 
writing, like his skill with the flute, as simply 
the means for his own enjoyment and the amuse- 
ment of his associates, his ambition shut in within 
his own little world of squalor and destitution. In 
appearance he was below the middle stature, and 
with a club foot, so that physical deformity weighed 
upon him, as well as the miserable conditions of his 
life, and made him more sensitive as well as hope- 
less. For seventeen years he bent over the looms 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 173 

in the School Hill factory, and then removed to 
the small hamlet of Newtyle, near Dundee, where 
a cotton factory had been recently established. He 
now had a family of a wife and four children. In 
the commercial crash of 1836, after he had been 
there but a short time, the factory was suspended, 
only sufficient work being found for the operatives 
with families to allow them five shillings a week. 
Five shillings a week for six persons meant starva- 
tion and creeping death, " an empty armry and a 
cold hearthstone." Thorn and his family waited 
week after week, " hoping that times would mend," 
and with no prospect before them, if they aban- 
doned their miserable pittance, but roadside beg- 
gary. He gives the picture of the scene that drove 
them to the latter alternative. 

" Imagine a cold spring forenoon. It is eleven 
o'clock, but our little dwelling shows none of the 
signs of that time of day. The four children were 
still asleep. There is a bed cover hung before the 
window to keep all within as much like night as 
possible ; and the mother sits beside the beds of 
her children to lull them back to sleep whenever 
any one shows an inclination to awake. For this 
there is a cause, for our weekly five shillings have 
not come as expected, and the only food in the 
house consists of a handful of oatmeal saved from 
the supper of last night. Our fuel is also exhausted. 



174 WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

My wife and I were conversing in sunken whispers 
about making an attempt to cook the handful of 
meal, when the youngest child awoke beyond its 
mother's power to hush it again to sleep, and then 
fell a-whimpering, and finally broke out in a steady 
scream, rendering it impossible any longer to keep 
the rest in a state of unconsciousness. Face after 
face sprang up, each with one consent exclaiming, 
' Oh, mither, mither, gie me a piece.' " 

The family took to the road, leaving the key of 
the miserable tenement with the landlord, in the 
hope of being eventually able to return to a home 
like that. By the sale to a pawnbroker in Dundee 
of "some relics of better days," — one can hardly 
imagine what relics or what days, — a small pack 
of cheap hawker's goods was procured for the wife, 
and four shillings' worth of books for the husband, 
to try to sell, but they can only have been the flim- 
siest disguise for the necessity of depending upon 
charity. The tramp began, the mother carrying 
the youngest child on her breast, and often bearing 
the next youngest also, who was unable to follow 
the weary road the whole distance. Sunset was 
followed by cold, sour east winds and rains. At 
nine o'clock they arrived at a comfortable farm- 
house, where they were refused shelter, in the ab- 
sence of the proprietor. All beseeching of the 
housekeeper was in vain, and the husband returned 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 175 

to the family, who had crept closer together, and 
were all asleep except the mother. 

" Oh, Willie,. Willie, what keepit ye. I 'm doot- 
fu' o' Jeanie ; is na she waesome like ? Let 's in 
frae the cauld." 

" We 've nae wae to gang, lass, whate'er come 
o' us. Yon folk winnae hae us." 

After cowering under a wet mantle in despair 
for a time, another effort was made. The husband 
wrote a note by the fast fading light, asking for 
shelter, and endeavored to have it taken in at a 
gentleman's mansion near by. It was refused, but 
a farm laborer was touched by the spectacle of the 
forlorn family, crouching shelterless in the cold 
and rain, and took them to a neighboring farm- 
house, where they were warmed and fed in the ser- 
vants' quarters, and put to rest in beds of straw 
and bagging in an outhouse. Between three and 
four o'clock the father was wakened by the deadly 
scream of the mother, who had wakened to find her 
infant dead by her side, its little life having been 
worn out by the cold, hunger, and fatigue of the 
previous day. Amid the wailing of the children, 
and in the benumbing anguish of the blow, the 
most vivid remembrance of that moment to the 
father was the watching of the wheeling and flut- 
tering of a colony of swallows, their fellow-lodgers, 
who had been awakened by the outcries. 



176 WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

From perfect grief there need not be 
Wisdom or even memory ; 
One thing alone remains to me, 
The woodspurge has a cup of three. 

Kind hands assisted in burying the child in the 
country graveyard, and the tramp was renewed. 
The poor goods and books would not sell, and no 
work was to be found, if, indeed, it was more than 
hopelessly looked for. The people, mostly the 
poor, " gave bits of bread for the poor bairnies," 
and shelter was found after nightfall in the out- 
houses of farms, experience having taught them 
that it was useless to apply for lodgings during 
daylight. They met and shared the fortunes of 
many " gangrel-bodies," some poor and respectable 
like themselves, and others professional mendicants 
and wandering ne'er-do-wells to whom beggary was 
the accustomed mode of livelihood, and many 
tragedies of life in its last extremity like their own 
passed under their eyes. One evening, in a gather- 
ing of people in the street of the village of Errol, 
he heard a man of grave countenance and respect- 
able appearance singing, and with that note of 
despair in his voice which touched his heart with 
the sympathy like that which made Goldsmith rush 
from the lighted room to relieve the poor beggar- 
woman singing under the window. That night in 
their lodging there was a young woman rocking 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 177 



a corpse-like infant, whose wailing would not be 
stilled. Then the man who had been singing 
entered, and bent over the dying child : — 

" I have wearied sadly for your coming, James," 
said the woman. 

" It 's so dark out by the nicht," replied the 
man, "I only found out this door by our wean 
greetin'." 

The child died during the night. 

At length in the town of Methven, without even 
the necessary sixpence, preliminary to untieing the 
shoes in a tramp lodging house, an idea struck 
Thorn that he might make use of his flute to avoid 
absolute mendicancy. Telling his wife to take the 
flute from their budget, and to accompany him, he 
went out into the streets. The story can be told 
only in his own words. 

" We found ourselves in a beautiful green lane, 
fairly out of town, and opposite a genteel-looking 
house, at the windows of which sat several well- 
dressed people. I think that it might be our 
bewilderment that attracted their notice — perhaps 
not favorably. 

" ' A quarter of an hour longer,' said I, 6 and it 
will be darker. Let us walk out a bit.' 

" The sun had been down a good while and the 
gloamin' was lovely. In spite of everything I felt 
a momentary reprieve. I dipped my dry flute in a 



178 WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

little brook and began to play. It rang sweetly 
amongst the trees. I moved on and on, still play- 
ing, and still facing the town. The Flowers of 
the Forest brought me before the house, lately 
mentioned. My music raised one window after 
another, and in less than ten minutes put me in 
possession of three shillings ninepence of good 
British money. I sent the mother home with this 
treasure, and directed her to send the little girl to 
me. It was by this time nearly dark. Every one 
says, ' Things just need a beginning.' I have had 
a beginning and a very good one, too. I had also 
a turn for strathspeys, and there appeared to be a 
run on them. By this time I was nearing the mid- 
dle of the to wd. When I finally made my way, 
and retired to my lodging, it was with five shillings 
and some pence in addition to what was given us. 
My little girl got a beautiful shawl and some arti- 
cles of wearing apparel." 

He followed up his playing by writing an ode to 
his flute, which he got printed on slips, and sent in 
to the houses before which he appeared, with satis- 
factory results in donations, in one instance receiv- 
ing the magnificent reward of half a guinea. But, 
as he says, it was but " beggar's wark," and he 
was glad to return to his weaving when times got 
a little better. 

After a year at the loom in Aberdeen, he had an 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 179 

opportunity to work as a journeyman for a weaver, 
who took in custom work, in the little town of In- 
verury in the district bordering on Mar. Here, 
after nine months' residence, his wife, his " faithful 
Jeanie," died in child-bed, leaving him with three 
children, the daughter a herd lassie at a lonely 
farm at some distance. In January, 1841, being- 
then more than forty years of age, and never be- 
fore having attempted to find a market for his 
verse, the notion occurred to him, in despair at the 
dullness of work, to send a poem, entitled The 
Blind Boy's Pranks, to the Aberdeen Journal. It 
was prefaced by a note, signed "A Serf," and de- 
claring that the writer was compelled to weave 
fourteen hours out of the four and twenty. After 
some time, and while he was engaged in packing 
the few clothes of himself and children in order to 
seek shelter at the Aberdeen House of Eefuge, he 
received a letter, with encouraging words, from the 
editor, and inclosing half a guinea. The poem was 
widely copied into the Scottish newspapers, and 
attracted very favorable attention. Among its 
admirers was a Mr. Gordon of Knockespock, an 
Aberdeenshire laird, who made inquiries about the 
author and interested himself in his welfare. It is 
difficult to understand the sudden and extraor- 
dinary popularity of this poem, which is by no 
means of commanding merit, but the story of 



180 WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

Thorn's life became known and he was treated as a 
literary phenomenon. He was taken on a holiday 
trip to London by Mr. Gordon, and introduced to 
the leaders of the Scottish colony there, who made 
much of him, and on his return he was given 
a public dinner in Aberdeen. Demands for his 
verses came upon him from various periodicals, and 
he was enabled to establish a custom weaving shop 
in Inverury for himself. The next three years, 
while he was thus engaged, were the happiest and 
the only comfortable ones of his life. He refused 
other offers of employment, and asked no patron- 
age except the purchase of his home-made clothes. 
He was the head of a little circle of local bards, 
who looked up to him, and sought his critical ap- 
proval and patronage for their verses. His fame 
was increasing and reached a national knowledge 
in the publication of the volume of his poems, in 
1844, by a leading London firm. In an evil hour 
he was persuaded to give up his business of weav- 
ing and establish himself in London as an agent 
for the sale of weaver's cloth. He was without 
business knowledge or business habits, lived reck- 
lessly and extravagantly, keeping an open house 
for Chartist agitators and wandering Scottish poets. 
His inspiration failed him ; he wrote little or no- 
thing, and lost his head completely in the whirl 
of excitement and social dissipation. After three 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 181 

years of this, what he called his "Hospital" was 
closed by a sheriff's sale of his furniture, and he 
returned to Scotland by the aid of a subscription 
from his friends and a grant from the Literary 
Fund. He settled at Hawkhill, near Dundee, but 
his health was broken, and his habits of industry 
destroyed, and he lived recklessly and wretchedly, 
until death relieved him soon after, in February, 
1848. With one fitful gleam of prosperity William 
Thorn's life of half a century had been passed in 
such want and abject misery as falls to the lot of 
few mortals, and amid a squalor and degradation 
of surroundings to which the country poverty of 
Burns and Hogg, in healthy air and in touch with 
the sweetness and majesty of nature, was rich and 
fortunate. One is as surprised and almost shocked 
to find the flowers of genuine poetry blooming in 
such a life, as to see a pot of violets growing amid 
the whirling dust and rattling noise of a weaving 
factory or in the window of a dingy whiskey shop. 
That his life was not worse than it was under the 
influences which affected it, is no less wonderful. 
"To us," he says, " virtues were known only by 
their shadows," and that sentence tells all the hope- 
less misery of an existence in which squalor and 
unremitting toil were relieved only by the fitful 
gleams of stupefying indulgence, and in which an 
ever-pressing want meant the deprivation not only 



182 WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

of the comforts, but of the necessities of life. That 
such a page of human history should be possible 
and common in the record of a civilized society is 
more appalling than the devastation of war, or the 
crimes of natural malignity, and we must wonder 
how any spark of virtue or genius survived it. 

The interest in the life of a man who has written 
poetry does not make its value. It may add an 
element of curiosity to biographical history, but it 
is upon its own inherent quality that it must de- 
pend for consideration and remembrance. Extra- 
ordinary circumstances in the life and character of 
the writer may lend an additional interest to his 
poetry, and cause it to be studied more attentively 
from a psychological point of view, but it must 
first be genuine poetry, and the questions of the 
personality and circumstances of its author are 
subordinate ones. Other thieves and blackguards 
like Francis Villon have doubtless written verses in 
the intervals of their debauches, and other plough- 
men like Burns and other weavers like Thorn have 
unquestionably done so under equally difficult and 
depressing conditions, but that fact has not kept 
their poetry alive or their names in remembrance. 
There were contemporaries of Tliom, fishermen, 
turf-cutters, handicraftsmen, and publicans, whose 
names are preserved in local history and who even 
published forgotten volumes, who wrote verses un- 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 183 

der circumstances no less extraordinary than his 
own, but the world has taken no note of them, and 
is not called upon to do so. The question in 
regard to William Thorn, as to all other poets, is 
as to what contribution, small or great, he made to 
the stock of genuine poetry in form, expression, and 
essence, fitting it to stand alone and to speak with 
a living voice to the emotions of the world, aside 
from any pathos or interest connected with its pro- 
duction. Poetry of this kind in the work of Wil- 
liam Thorn is very small in quantity. He published 
but a single volume, in which the verse comprises 
scarcely more than a hundred pages, and much the 
greater portion of this is artificial in conception 
and imperfect in form and expression. Like many 
uneducated authors, he endeavored to imitate the 
writers of polite literature, who seemed to him 
models of taste and fancy, although he had the 
native good judgment and national feeling to con- 
fine himself to the Scottish dialect, and the greater 
proportion of his verses have this weakness of imi- 
tation, or were called forth by special occasions and 
for a local audience. The poems entitled The 
Blind Boy's Pranks, which first attracted attention, 
are fanciful descriptions of the doings of Cupid, 
who is not more at home on the cold streams and 
heathery hills of the north of Scotland than on the 
head of an Italian image seller in the smoke and 



184 WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

grime of London, and has no acquaintance with the 
sturdy Scotch lassies with whom he is" supposed to 
play tricks. The native fairies with which Hogg 
peopled the raths and mounds of Ettrick do not 
appear in Thorn's verses. When he wrote of what 
must have appealed most strongly to his heart and 
knowledge, the wrongs and sufferings of his fellow 
operatives, he was, as has been said, greatly influ- 
enced by the perfervid and declamatory style of 
Ebenezer Elliot, and weakened the force of his 
descriptions by exaggeration and savage invective. 
His songs were for the most part in the vein of the 
current Scottish lyric poetry, and, although not 
without grace and felicity of expression, rarely 
above the limits of conventionality and imitation. 
The song by which he is most widely known, and 
which appears in all the collections of Scottish 
poetry, The Mitherless Bairn, owes its vogue to 
its simple pathos, appealing to the popular emotions 
rather than to its quality as poetry. There are 
forcible and felicitous lines scattered through 
Thorn's poetry, in which the language and melody 
combine to render the thought or sentiment with 
original power, and touches of description which 
show the sensitive eye illumined by the feeling 
heart, as this of the winter-beaten birds : — 

Like beildless birdies, when they ca' 
Frae wet, wee wing the batted snaw, — 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 185 

and the pervading genuineness of a deep feeling, 
even if imperfectly expressed. There was the 
gloaming of a " waesome light " about his spirit, 
which shone through his uncertain gifts of utter- 
ance, although its power would not have been 
enough to have preserved his poetry in remem- 
brance, except for two lyrics which reach the very 
highest level of Scottish song in their completeness 
and finish of construction, as well as in their sim- 
plicity and power. It may be believed from the cru- 
dity and imperfection of Thorn's other verses that 
this supreme felicity was accidental, the perfect 
rapture of some occasional song of a thrush break- 
ing out by its own inspiration after many careless 
warblings, rather than the deliberate effort of 
trained skill, and perhaps with little appreciation 
of their success. Every poet has his moments of 
supreme success when he reaches beyond his ordi- 
nary powers, and execution attains to the level of 
inspiration, but in most it is seen to be the culmi- 
nation of trained skill reached by long labor and 
painstaking effort. There is little, however, in 
Thorn's verse to lead to the expectation of such a 
flowering of perfect form and expression, and the 
impression is strong that they are accidental felici- 
ties. But, however produced, they give him an in- 
disputable title to a place beside the highest of the 
Scottish song writers, and will live by their innate 



186 WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

grace and power and feeling, when the rest of his 
work is forgotten, and the record of his strange and 
unfortunate life swallowed up in oblivion. This is 
the first one of them, grown from the banks of the 
Ythan, a little stream near Inverury, where Thorn 
wandered some evening after the day's benumbing 
labor at the loom : — 

YTHANSIDE. 

I had ae nicht, and only ane, 

On flow'ry Ythanside ; 
An' kith or kindred I hae nane 

That dwall by Ythanside ; 
Yet midnicht dream and morning vow, 

At hame they winna bide, 
But pu' and pu' my willing heart 

Awa' to Ythanside. 

What gars its restless wand'ring wish 

Seek aye to Ythanside, 
An' hover round yon fairy bush 

That spreads o'er Ythanside ? 
I think I see its pawkie boughs, 

Where lovers weel might hide ; 
An', oh, what heart could safely sit 

Yon nicht on Ythanside. 

Could I return and own the scaith 

I thole frae Ythanside, 
Would her mild eye bend lythe on me 

Ance mair on Ythanside ? 



WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 187 

Or would she crush my lowly love 

Beneath a brow o' pride ? 
I daurna claim and maurna blame 

Her heart on Ythanside. 



I '11 rue yon high and heathy seat 

That hangs o'er Ythanside ; 
I '11 rue the mill where burnies meet ; 

I '11 rue ye, Ythanside. 
And you, ye moon, wi' luckless licht, 

Pour'd a' your gowden tide 
O'er sic a brow ! sic e'en yon nicht ! 

Oh, weary Ythanside. 

This is the other one in a somewhat different 
vein, but with equal magic in its melody and ten- 
der sweetness of expression : — 

WHISPER LOW. 

Slowly, slowly the cauld moon creeps 

Wi' a licht unloesome to see ; 
It dwalls on the window whaur my love sleeps, 
An 'she winna wauken to me. 

Wearie, wearie, the hours, and slow, 
Wauken, my lovie, and whisper low. 

There 's nae ae sang in heaven's licht, 

Nor on the green earth doun, 
Like soun's which kind love kens at nicht, 
When whispers hap the soun' ; 
Hearin', fearin', sichin' so — 
Whisper, my bonnie love, whisper low ! 



188 WILLIAM THOM, THE WEAVER POET. 

They lack nae licht wha weel can speak 

In love's ain wordless wile ; 
Her ee-bree creepin' on my cheek 
Betrays her pawkie smile. 
Happy, happy, silent so — 
Breathin' bonnie love, whisper low ! 

Was yon a waft o' her wee white han' 

Wi' a warnin' " wheest " to me ? 
Or was it a gleam o' that f ause moon f a'in 
On my poor misguided, ee ? 
Wearie, wearie, wearie O — 
Wauken, my lovie, an' whisper low ! 

The poor hand-loom weaver, struggling with the 
day's darg from the cold dawn to the cheerless 
night, and with but fitful gleams of light and hap- 
piness in the squalid misery of existence, and half 
unconsciously it may be, has interpreted the sad- 
ness and sweetness of love's despair and love's long- 
ing, with a melody and a rapture of utterance 
which touch the immortal sympathies of the heart 
through the magic of poetry, and will live in the 
emanations of his spirit to the eyes that for gener- 
ations to come shall light upon these modest violets 
of song. Much greater and more fortunate men 
have failed to join the " choir invisible," and the 
poetry of loftier and stronger minds has perished, 
while these songs will remain in the immortal life 
of simple thought and deep feeling. 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY, 

The publication in 1859 of Count Hersart de 
Villemarque's Barzaz Breiz, or collection of an- 
cient Breton ballads and folk-songs, excited almost 
as much interest in the literary world as Bishop 
Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry a 
century earlier, if not reaching to the point of that 
evoked by Macpherson's Ossian. The interest was 
historical and ethnological as well as literary. 
Here were historical ballads, full of fire and pas- 
sion and pathos, dealing not alone with such com- 
paratively recent and recognized historic figures as 
Bernard du Guesclin and Jean de Montfort, but 
dating back to the sixth century and earlier, hav- 
ing for definite characters Merlin and King Arthur, 
and containing distinct traces of Druidic and bardic 
influence, which had been preserved, not in manu- 
script, as were the remains of Celtic poetry in 
Wales and Ireland, but by oral tradition and as a 
part of the still living folk-poetry of the people. 
It was no wonder that great interest was excited 
by the apparent evidence that a people living in 
the midst of European civilization had preserved an 



190 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

unbroken tradition of popular poetry for thirteen 
centuries, with strong traces of heathen influence 
extending back much farther, in almost absolute 
purity of language and definite historic characteri- 
zation, and it was regarded from an ethnologic 
point of view as of hardly less importance than the 
discoveries of the remains of the Lake dwellers and 
other tokens of the existence of prehistoric man. 
Apparent credibility was given to the authenticity 
of the collection by the fact that the Breton people 
had preserved their language in its native condition 
and form, and by their customs, dress, and manner 
of life were marked off from the rest of the French 
people by a distinct line, which showed the strength, 
originality, and persistence of the race. It was 
known that they retained the original characteris- 
tics of the Celtic race, its fervency of religious 
faith, its melancholy, its sensitiveness to the mys- 
terious influences of nature, its passion and its loy- 
alty, and that many of its customs and habits of 
life were distinct survivals of medievalism, and 
utterly anomalous to the spirit of modern civiliza- 
tion. It was therefore not. thought impossible, if 
extraordinary, that the ancient ballads should have 
been preserved in their original purity, and the 
compositions of the ancient bards and minstrels 
still remain to be collected from the lips of the wan- 
dering mendicant singers, who gathered audiences 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 191 

about them at Fairs and Pardons, or lightened the 
gloom of the winter evenings in the farm kitchens 
with song and legend. The character of the bal- 
lads in Villemarque's collection was singularly well 
adapted to produce this belief. They were simple 
in construction, impregnated with the character- 
istics of the people, their faith, their loyalty, 
their purity and gravity of thought, their subjec- 
tion to the influence of the supernatural, and their 
devoted patriotism, and, aside from their genuine 
strength and elevation as poetry, were a faithful 
reflection of the thoughts and habits of their peo- 
ple/ and of the authentic facts , of their history. 
There were no signs of such incongruous piecing 
of the thoughts of a later civilization and the style 
of a later literature upon an ancient substance, as 
were visible in Bishop Percy's emendations and 
completions of the English and Scottish ballads, 
but they were complete and homogeneous in the 
very spirit and language of ancient poetry. As a 
consequence, they were not only accepted as gen- 
uine and authentic, but there was an immense 
interest created in the study and revival of the 
Breton language and literature, and an appreciation 
of the characteristics and influence of the Celtic 
race in France, which has continued and deepened 
to the present time. An academy was founded, 
with M. de Villeinarque for its president, and as- 



192 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

semblies of bards and scholars were held like the 
Welsh Eistedfodds, and there was a temporary 
Breton rage like that for the Highland Scotch un- 
der the influence of the Waverley novels, although 
no ruler of France went so far as to appear in the 
Breton hat and waistcoat, as George the Fourth 
did in the Highland kilt during his visit to Edin- 
burgh. Several translations of the ballads of the 
Barzaz Breiz appeared in German, and Mr. Tom 
Taylor rendered them into English, in a version 
singularly compounded of archaic phraseology and 
stage rhetoric. But the later investigation of care- 
ful and conscientious collectors of Breton folk- 
poetry, like M. F. M. Luzel and others, has 
destroyed the faith in the authenticity of M. Ville- 
marque's ballads almost as completely as in that of 
Macpher son's Ossian. They are not to be found 
in existence among the present singers or the surviv- 
ors of the generation from whom M. Villemarque 
professed to have gathered them, except in a very 
mutilated form, and with most of their flowers of 
poetry ruthlessly swept away. Experiments have 
been tried at gatherings of the most famous deposi- 
tories of folk-poetry and the most accomplished 
singers, by repeating the ballads of the Barzaz 
Breiz to them, but they have in all cases either 
professed total ignorance, or insisted upon such 
amendments as deprived them of all but the faint- 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 193 

est resemblance ; while the only occasions in which 
they have been heard sung by the peasantry have 
been traced to the scattered leaves of the book it- 
self. A hot literary controversy has been waged 
over the authenticity of M. Villemarque's ballads, 
but the best opinion has settled into the belief that 
they are fabrications and reconstructions from frag- 
ments not more authentic and genuine than those 
which were the basis of Macpherson's Ossian or 
Chatterton's poems of Kowley, although M. Ville- 
marque was as thoroughly possessed with the spirit 
of Breton poetry, and as saturated with the know- 
ledge of Breton history, as Sir Walter Scott was 
with Scottish poetry and Scottish history, and in 
one sense they were as genuine as the ballads of 
The Baron of Smalholme and Thomas the Khymer. 
But the idea that the contemporary poems relating 
to Merlin and King Arthur, and even those of the 
exploits of Du Guesclin and The Combat of the 
Thirty, had been preserved in faithful and uncor- 
rupted condition by oral tradition, and were still a 
portion of the folk-songs of the Breton peasantry, 
to say nothing of the survival of Druidic poetry 
and tradition in a distinct form, attractive as it is 
to the historic imagination, must be given up, like 
the belief in the survival of the epic of Fingal. 

It does not do to expect too much from folk- 
poetry in the way of the perpetuation of history. 



194 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

Like the remains of prehistoric people buried in 
geologic strata, it has been subject to the inevita- 
ble destruction of natural forces and to the attri- 
tion of time, and only remains like the fragments of 
implements and the piles of kitchen middens, from 
which careful study can extract the evidences of 
former existence and habits. It is only when an- 
cient poetry has been committed to writing, like 
the poems of Homer and the Scandinavian sagas, 
that it can be preserved in anything like a com- 
plete state ; and while there is a singular tenacity 
in popular poetry, it cannot endure for centuries by 
oral tradition alone, however secluded the people 
or however strong their national and poetic spirit. 
Sir Walter Scott was only just in time to save the 
Border ballads of the previous two centuries, and 
the usual duration of popular ballads in anything 
but an indistinct and fragmentary condition is even 
less. But, although the authenticity of the ballads 
of the Barzaz Breiz is discredited, it cannot be 
said that there is no genuine and valuable Breton 
folk-song. On the contrary, it exists in very great 
quantity and of a high quality, not only as poe- 
try, but as illustrating the character and history of 
the people.^ The Breton race is not only a pro- 
foundly poetical one, by its pensive, mystic, and 
deeply religious character, but by its secluded con- 
dition apart from the currents of modern education, 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 195 

and its occupations in the gloomy, wind-swept, 
and rain-beaten fields and on the mysterious and 
terrifying seas, is particularly subject to the in- 
fluences which make folk-song a part of its life 
and the natural expression of its thoughts and 
emotions. Nor is its folk-poetry entirely without 
value in the strictly historical sense, although any- 
thing like absolute accuracy or the definite remains 
of contemporary historic verse are not to be ex- 
pected. As in the extant folk-lore of other nations, 
the roots run far back, and evidences of the tradi- 
tions and customs of former ages survive in a frag- 
mentary and altered state, in which may be traced 
the tokens of the existence of the race in the ear- 
liest dawn of history and even before any known 
records. Thus, if there are no authentic poems of 
the time of Merlin and King Arthur in the Breton 
folk-songs of the present day, their names and tra- 
ditions survive ; and, if the school culture of the 
Druids does not survive in the poems of numeral 
questions on the characters and events of the Bible, 
as imagined or invented by M. Villemarque, no less 
fragments of their customs and worship remain in 
the habits and traditions of the people in and out- 
side of their religious ritual, and are perpetuated 
in their folk-songs, if with as little definite know- 
ledge as of the rites once performed at the feet of 
the dolmens or in the temple of Karnac. The fai- 



196 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

ries, and the dwarfs, and the spirits of the sea and 
air still survive, and are dreaded or invoked in the 
same spirit, if with less fervency than the saints 
and powers of the Church. Thus M. Paul Sebillot, 
in his Contes des Marins, gathered in Upper Brit- 
tany, tells that the sailors shake their fists at and 
threaten with their knives an unfavorable wind, 
and there are numerous actual customs as well as 
traditions among the Breton people which are evi- 
dent survivals from heathen ages, while the rites of 
the Church itself have many traces of the adoption 
of forms of nature worship. This element of the 
supernatural, like the traditions of actual history, 
is fading away in Brittany as in all other countries, 
but enough remains to throw a strong light on the 
ancient customs, as well as the fundamental charac- 
ter of the race, and to inform its folk-poetry with 
this element to a degree which that of few modern 
nations possesses. 

The interest of modern folk-poetry is, however, 
mainly in quality as poetry, its expression with 
eloquence and feeling of the emotions of the hu- 
man heart, and the representation which it gives 
of the quality of the mind, the temperament, the 
degree of intelligence, and the habits and customs 
of the people who produced it. In this view the 
two latest volumes of the collection of Breton folk- 
songs by F. M. Luzel, Sonniou Breiz-Izel (Paris. 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 197 

Emile Bouillon, 1890), are particularly interesting. 
His two previous volumes, Gwerzion Breiz-Izel, 
were devoted to the fantastic, supernatural, and 
tragic ballads which held a place by the side of 
the fabulous tales in the minds of the people, were 
derived from the remote past, and had little con- 
nection with the life of to-day. On the contrary, 
the Sonniou, for which songs is the somewhat im- 
perfect equivalent in English, are the immediate 
interpretation of their thoughts and emotions, the 
transcripts of their present life, and its events, sung 
and told by living poets, or those who have lived 
within a time to make them a part of the present 
people, j They include the songs which are sung 
by the cradles to drowsing infants, the hopes and 
sorrows of love, the joyous welcomes to weddings, 
the homely pains of married life, and the sorrows 
for the common lot of death, the chants of religious 
faith and worship, the charms against diseases, the 
accompaniments of labor and the peculiarities of 
trade and occupation, the homely reflections on the 
conduct of life, and the rustic humor and satire, 
and, in short, all the thoughts and events, which 
mark the daily life of the people. Of their abso- 
lute genuineness there can be no question. They 
have all the internal evidence in their construction 
and language, the simplicity and abruptness of 
thought, the imperfection of utterance combined 



198 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

with untaught eloquence and strength, the occa- 
sional vulgarity by the side of an equally great 
delicacy, the simple and powerful melody, and all 
the characteristics of popular poetry, which are as 
unmistakable as the perfumes of the flowers of the 
field. Their collection has been the work of forty- 
five years, in which M. Luzel has indefatigably 
traversed the provinces of Lower Brittany, visiting 
the solitary huts of the sabot makers and hemp- 
weavers, colloquing with wandering beggars, listen- 
ing to the songs and stories at the kitchen firesides 
of lonely farms in winter, gathering the singers at 
the Fair around him in the tap-rooms, taking down 
the songs of nursing mothers, the sailors on ship- 
board and the soldiers in the barracks, the shepherds 
on the plains and the laborers in the fields, and, in 
short, gathering every form of verse which is the 
expression of the popular thoughts and emotions. 
They are naturally of less purely literary merit than 
the ballads of the Barzaz Breiz, which are carefully 
arranged, trimmed, and decorated for poetical effect. 
It is always a sign for suspicion when folk-poetry 
is too good. The picturesque garments of the 
Breton peasantry must show the signs of actual 
wear and even the stains of grease and dirt, if they 
are to have the genuine effect, and when they are 
of too fine material, too carefully arranged, and 
shining and spotless, the impression is that they 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWEB BRITTANY. 199 

are simply stage costumes drawn from the theatri- 
cal wardrobe. Even the beggar with his rags too 
artistically draped suggests the painter's model. 
So there must be the element of reality in their 
defects before the folk-songs can be accepted as 
really genuine, and it adds a power and even a liter- 
ary effect to them, which in its peculiar flavor the 
most accomplished literary art cannot produce. 
We seem to hear the speech of living men, to feel 
the thoughts of simple hearts through the imper- 
fect utterance, and to experience all the flavor of 
actual and homely life. The pieces in the Son- 
niou collected by M. Lnzel have all this quality. 
They have the coarse material and the patches of 
garments actually worn, and their charm is due to 
their native picturesqueness and originality. There 
is no false sentiment, however deep the feeling, 
and the homely thoughts are expressed in homely 
phrases, with natural imagery drawn from the as- 
pect of nature about them and their avocations in 
life. Their standard of conventionality in speech 
differs from that of polite society, and there are 
words and phrases which smack of a coarse and 
natural life, but they are, nevertheless, singularly 
pure in thought, and show the soundness and hon- 
esty of the Breton character, as well as its tender- 
ness and warmth of affection. If not great refine- 
ment, there is great depth of feeling, and actual 



200 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

vulgarity of thought is as rare as immoral sugges- 
tion, even in the rude satires and humorous narra- 
tives. 

The beginning of all folk-song is in the cooing 
melodies which the mothers chant by the inspira- 
tion of nature by the cradles of their drowsing in- 
fants, and in which the affections of their hearts 
take an articulate form as naturally as the songs of 
birds. The berceuses, or cradle songs, of the 
Breton peasantry have all the elements of deep 
feeling and childish simplicity of expression which 
characterize the voice of motherhood in every clime 
and every station in life, and unite the queen and 
the peasant in a common bond. The same lovely 
and touching images suggest themselves, and the 
same simple and soothing melody flows naturally 
from the lips. This Breton cradle song might 
find its parallel in thought and language in many 

nations : — 

CRADLE SONG. 

Toutouie la, la, my little child, 
Toutouie la, la. 

Your mother is here, my little child, 
To rock you softly, little dear. 

Your mother is here, my little lamb, 
She will sing you a little song. 

The other day she wept sorely ; 
Now she smiles, the little mother. 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 201 

Toutouie la, la, my little bird, 

In the sweet breast of thy rose tree. 

To fly to heaven, my little angel, 
Do not spread your little wing. 

There is also the element of infantile humor, as 
in all nursery songs, to bring smiles to the rosy 
cheeks, with food for the simple imagination open- 
ing its eyes on the birds and beasts around it, and 
endowing them with human life. One can feel 
how a child would appreciate the little story of The 
Fox Gallant with a sense at once of reality and hu- 
mor : — 

THE FOX GALLANT. 

I had a pullet and I had but one, 

A fox carried her off, and now I have none. 

The fox has carried her off from the sill of my door, 
And more than that, I think, he has done me disgrace. 

But I perceive Jean le Bi and also Herod, 
And I ask them, have you not seen my pullet. 

And I pass my head out of the front room window. 
I see my pullet, who on the village green is dancing, 

And the fox by her side with a Flanders basket ; 
With pears and with apples he is treating my pullet. 

Next to cradle songs, the creations of motherly 
affection, come the songs of youthful passion, when 



202 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

the instinct of love wakes in the hearts of the 
young man and the maid ; and they sing, also, as 
naturally and simply as birds do in pairing time. 
There is often a touching inconsequence in these 
simple strains, a transcript of nature as it speaks to 
the heart, and finds almost inarticulate utterance in 
emotions of joy and sorrow, which is like the war- 
bling of a bird, often ending its trill of gladness 
with a plaintive note. And the verses entitled The 
Song of the Nightingale, with its inconsequent but 
natural imageries at the close, which has an effect 
beyond the reach of art, has this penetrating and 
realistic effect : — 

THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 

Sing, sing, nightingale, it is early you are singing. 

Not earlier than you, young man. Hunting are you going ? 

Good luck to you, little comrade. I am not going a-hunt- 

ing. 
I am on my way to Kerlosquet, where my love is dwelling. 
The nightingale then asked him, being a curious gossip, 
There are many houses at Kerlosquet, to which one are you 

going ? 
The young man answered her in a tone of humor, 
Good luck to you, little comrade, I am not at confession. 
In a moment after he saw his mistress coming ; 
By her color and her looks he saw that she was ailing. 
Anxiously he asked her, feeling for her sadness, 
Are you sick at heart, or sick in your spirit ? 
And she answered, with a little smile so gracious, 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 203 

I am not subject to sickness, no, by the mercy of Jesus. 

— The spider does well to spin his web, 

To spin and to spread it and to dry it on the meadow. 

A breath of wind will come and bear it away. 

The hearts of young men are like it. 

The most numerous producers of love songs in 
the Breton folk-poetry are the doer, or young the- 
ological students, to whose title the English word 
clerk, as it was understood in the time of Chaucer, 
is the nearest equivalent. These young men, 
mostly the sons of peasants or persons in humble 
circumstances, are destined for the priesthood, for 
which they have manifested a vocation by their 
special intellectual brightness or devotional temper- 
ament. They are naturally the pride and hope of 
their families, to whom the office of priest is a po- 
sition of worldly advancement and religious rever- 
ence, and the ballads tell touching tales of sacri- 
fices by poor parents to enable their son to pursue 
his studies. They are sent to the seminaries at- 
tached to the abbeys in the various cathedral towns, 
from which they return in the vacation to mingle 
with the life of the people. Although destined for 
the priesthood, the instinct of youthful passion 
breaks out, as they meet the young maidens of the 
neighborhood in the fields or at the village f^tes 
and gatherings, and there are struggles of love and 
longing, which sometimes end peacefully in the 



204 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY, 

surrender of the affection to the demands of the 
priestly vow, sometimes in the tragedy of broken 
hearts and a double devotion to religious celibacy, 
and sometimes, under the influence of a stronger 
passion, in the renunciation of the priesthood and 
marriage with the object of affection. These young 
clerks are, naturally, objects of great attraction to 
the young maidens by the contrast of their superior 
manners and education to the duller and coarser 
young men of the peasant class, and this attraction 
results in many dramas of love, not to mention the 
deeper tragedies of blighted passions and ruined 
lives. From their superior intellectual activity and 
education the young clerks are the most fertile and 
eloquent of the folk-poets, and by far the greater 
number of the love songs in the Sonniou are their 
production, and relate to the condition in which 
their affections are bound and limited. Their 
songs are genuine folk-poetry in their simplicity 
and strength of expression, except in the few in- 
stances where sophomoric pedantry overloads them 
with mythologic terms and academic phrases, and 
they often express a deep feeling with simple and 
natural eloquence. In The Ditty of Love the 
young girl appeals to the clerk to abandon the 
priesthood, since there are enough priests in the 
country, and expect the blessing of God in marry- 
ing the one who loves him, and then resigns herself 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 205 

to the consolation they will have in hearing the 
bells of each other's convents and their voices 
raised in psalm : — 

THE DITTY OF LOVE. 

When from my books I turn to the sight of the world, 
I am touched by a prick, which troubles my spirit. 

I fancy I hear the sweet voice of my mistress 
Speak with a tone that is melting with sadness. 

Whenever my mistress raises her voice in song, 
The fairies of the mountain reecho the air. 

The fishes in the sea dart about rejoicing, 

And the sailors on the deck dance gaily as they hear it. 

The rocks upon the mountain split themselves asunder 
In hearing her voice and seeing her beauty. 

When I cast a glance, which rests upon my mistress, 
It seems to me I see the queen of all the maidens. 

Her dainty hands are mingled with red and with white, 
And her eyes are brilliant as the stars in the sky. 

Her two cheeks are roses of a natural color, 
And her lips are as sweet as the pure honeycomb. 

— Good morning, my fair maiden, on my knees I fall 
To ask your benediction to become a Capuchin. 

To ask your benediction to become a Recollet, 
In St. Francis convent, in the village of Morlaix. 



206 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

— Oh, enough of Recollets has St. Francis's convent, 
And enough of priests has the village of Morlaix. 

There are enough of priests everywhere in the country, 
Marry the one you love, and God will also love you. 

If you become a Recollet at St. Francis convent, 
I will go to the Calvary and there become a nun. 

There we will hear together the bells of our two convents, 
And there we will be singing the praises of our Lord. 

There we will be singing, with our lifted voices, 
The Gloria in Excelsis and the Salve Regina. 

The hero of the piece entitled I will be neither 
Priest nor Monk is made of more determined 
stuff, and demands that his books shall be thrown 
into the fire, and liberty given him to marry the 
object of his love, or else he will die : — 

I WILL BE NEITHER PRIEST NOR MONK 

Between the prairie and the grassy hill, 
There is a bridge, I know it to my will. 

No one can pass at eve along its planks, 
Because of scholars rude, who play their pranks. 

When at prayers I should be at grand mass, 
No pater nor ave from my lips does pass. 

Across my shoulder I only fix my glance 
On the young girl, who causes my mischance. 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 207 

I see my sweet beneath the shadowed nave, 
As the lily fair, and as the red gold brave. 

A cambric cap upon her head sets well, 
Which cost, at least, six ecus for an ell. 

And underneath a fine coiffure of lace, 
That like a lily's margin frames her face. 

Her petticoat, so rounded and so gay, 
Shines with a double silver cord's display. 

A robe she wears as red as any coal, 
And, oh, I love her in my inmost soul. 

— Put money in your pocket, little fool, 
And to Treguier take your way to school. 

Go to Treguier, and there study well, 
Become a priest and follow the church bell. 

— Keep your money in your own purse for me, 
For, by my faith, no priest nor monk I '11 be. 

My books throw in the fire, and let them burn, 
Or give them to my brother in his turn. 

"No priest or monk I ever shall be made, 
My heart demands the love of a fair maid. 

A lovely maid of Cornouaille, I ween, 
With eyes of blue and locks of amber sheen. 

And if I cannot have that golden head, 
Prepare the mass, for soon I shall be dead. 



208 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

In The Secrets of the Clerk there is a more del- 
icate fancy, and the gracious avowal has all the 
charm of a natural and touching imagery : — 

THE SECRETS OF THE CLERK. 

Each night, each night, as on my bed I lie, 
I do not sleep, but turn myself and cry. 

I do not sleep, but turn myself and weep, 
When I think of her I love so deep. 

Each day I seek the Wood of Love so dear, 
In hopes to see you at its streamlet clear. 

When I see you come through the forest grove, 
On its leaves I write the secrets of my love. 

— But a fragile trust are the forest leaves, 

To hold the secrets close which their page receives. 

When comes the storm of rain, and gusty air, 
Your secrets close are scattered everywhere. 

'T were safer far, young clerk, on my heart to write. 
Graven deep they 'd rest, and never take their flight. 

The amatory folk-songs of Brittany have their 
peculiar images and phrases, like those of all other 
countries, and which are repeated without variation 
as almost essential characteristics. The reader of 
Scottish ballads knows how invariably the recipient 
of a letter first smiles and then has his eyes blinded 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 209 

by tears, and recalls the constant repetition of 
familiar images and descriptions. So in the Breton 
folk-songs the lover constantly declares that he has 
worn out three pairs of sabots in coming to see her 
without being able to find out her thought, and that 
he has watched in the wind and rain through the 
night with no consolation but the sound of her soft 
breathing through the key-hole of the door; to 
which the cruel or coquettish damsel replies that 
she has no objection to tell him her thought, which 
is that he shoidd buy a new pair of shoes, or that 
he should take himself home as soon as possible. 
The piece entitled In the White Cabin at the 
Foot of the Mountain is a characteristic specimen 
of these songs, whose effect of simplicity can only 
be retained by an absolutely literal translation : — 

In the white cabin at the foot of the mountain 
Is my sweet, my love. 

Is my love, is my desire, 
And all my happiness. 

Before the night I must see her 
Or my little heart will break. 

My little heart will not break 
For my lovely dear I have seen. 

Fifty night I have been 

At the threshold of her door ; she did not know it. 



210 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

The rain and the wind whipped me, 
Until my garments dripped. 

Nothing came to console me 

Except the sound of breathing from her bed. 

Except the sound of breathing from her bed, 
Which came through the little hole for the key. 

Three pairs of shoes I have worn out, 
Her thought I do not know. 

The fourth pair I have begun to wear, 
Her thought I do not know. 

Five pairs, alas, in good count, 
Her thought I do not know. 

— If it is my thought you wish to know, 
It is not I, who will make a mystery of it. 

There are three roads on each side of my house, 
Choose one among them. 

Choose whichever you like among them, 
Provided it will take you far from here. 

— More is worth love, since it pleases me, 

Than wealth with which I do not know what to do. 

Wealth comes, and wealth it goes away, 
Wealth serves for nothing. 

Wealth passes like the yellow pears : 
Love endures for ever. 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 211 

More is worth a handful of love 
Than an oven full of gold and silver. 

Another form of the love song than the melan- 
choly apostrophe to the mistress, and the simple 
moralizing which accompanies it, is the gay chant, 
which was composed to the dance measures played 
by the biniou and the bombarde at the village fetes, 
and which was sung in accord with them. On these 
occasions, which were chiefly the Pardons, or ga- 
therings to celebrate the days of the Patron Saints, 
when the religious exercises are concluded, the 
young men engage in athletic competition, wrest- 
ling and jumping for prizes under the eyes of their 
sweethearts, and the festivities wind up with dan- 
cing on the green, and the scene is as gay as if it 
had no connection with religion. Every Breton 
story teller, and every writer on the life and cus- 
toms of Brittany, has delighted to depict these 
scenes, which are the rendezvous of youthful lovers 
and the embodiment of vigorous and healthy gay- 
ety, with all the picturesqueness of country life and 
color. The element of these dance songs is their 
lively and strongly accented melody to accompany 
the dancing air and illustrate the movements, as in 
the following specimen : — 

Sunday I have seen, 

Sunday I will see, 
Three of my young lovers, 

Who '11 come and dance with me. 



212 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWEB BRITTANY. 

Dance between the two, 

And pass before them gay, 
Dance between the three, 

And wave them all away. 

Press the foot of that ; 

And wink the eye at this ; 
Mock the other's pride ; 

There is no greater bliss. 

When you come to call, 

Pray let me know the hour ; 
I will grease my cakes 

And put eggs in the flour. 

I will oil the door ; 

The hinges will not creak ; 
In the closet bed 

I '11 lie, and will not speak. 

Come not through the yard, 

My flowers you will tread, 
My onions, and my cress, 

My peas and berries red. 
Throw straw upon the fire 

To show your darling head. 

It might be expected that in a country so much 
under the influence of the sea, and in which so 
large a proportion of the inhabitants are sailors, 
fishers on the stormy and dangerous coast or in 
the distant waters of Newfoundland and Iceland, 
there would be a large number of sea songs. The 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BBITTANY. 213 

folk-lore of Brittany is particularly rich in stories 
and legends of the sea, composed by the fishermen 
to while away the long hours of the passage to New- 
foundland or the nightwatches in the misty seas of 
Iceland; or embodying the mysterious and super- 
stitious terrors of the fishermen of the coast in the 
face of storms and foaming reefs ; and the impress 
of supernatural power in the ocean and the storm 
is very strong upon the imaginations of the Breton 
people. But the sailors themselves, like the labor- 
ers in the fields, do not seem to have the inspira- 
tion and poetical gift to put their thoughts into 
song. M. Luzel has been able to collect but a 
comparatively few of genuine sailor songs, and these 
are mostly tavern choruses or rude and common- 
place chants, with but very little of the salt of the 
seas and the voice of the breeze in them. The wo- 
men sometimes chant at the spinning-wheel songs 
of warning against the dangers and perils of becom- 
ing a sailor's wife, of which the following is an ex- 
ample : — 

DO NOT MARRY A SAILOR. 

Maidens young, who wish to wed, 
Take advice from an old head. 

If you marry, as you say, 
Do not take a sailor gay. 

If you take a sailor gay, 

You will sorrow night and day. 



214 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

When the farmer's wife 's in bed 
The sailor's wife the floor must tread. 

When the wind arises shrill, 

Her heart will beat, her eyes will fill. 

Her heart will beat, her eyes will fill, 
And in her veins the blood run chill. 

Every moment she seeks the door, 
— Mercy, how the torrents pour ! 

If I had store of money red, 

I know the husband I would wed. 

I 'd wed the heir of a good house, 
Who can reap the fields he ploughs. 

Who can reap the fields he ploughs, 
And in his stable has good cows. 

Both night and day whom I can see, 
And who will sleep by the side of me. 

While the poor sailor, day and night, 
Lives in peril and affright. 

Day and night must work and wake, 
And of a plank his cradle make. 

The Breton women, who spend hours at the 
spinning-wheel, as in all other countries, accompany 
the monotonous and musical drone with long chants, 
that hypnotize the sense of labor, which are often 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 215 

merely improvisations with as little sense and 
meaning as the lullabies for infants. But here is 
one into which the old spinner puts the thoughts of 
her willingness to make sacrifice of her all in order 
that her son might be educated as a priest, and her 
hopes of reward from his filial piety. The soothing 
and monotonous melody is necessarily lost in the 
translation. 

THE SONG OF THE OLD SPINNER. 

My wheel and my bonnet of straw 
And my waist of white linen 

Shall be all yours, my young clerk, 
That you may make yourself a priest. 

And my porringers and my spoons, 
He shall have them all at one time. 

And my old warp, and my brake, 
And my old carder besides. 

And when he is a priest 

I shall have a broidered robe. 

And my shoes will have ribbons, 
And my collar will be fluted. 

And a cap upon my head, 

Like that of a damsel of quality. 

One of the most notable and singular features in 
Breton folk-poetry is the feeling displayed toward 
animals. Almost human attributes of wisdom and 



216 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

affection are bestowed upon them, and, unlike 
many primitive races, the Breton peasantry have a 
great tenderness toward the dumb companions of 
their labors. When they kill them it is from 
necessity, and with a genuine sensibility for their 
sufferings, which may have its ancient root in a 
tradition of animal worship, such as led the North 
American Indian to apologize to the bear, whom he 
was killing with his arrows. At any rate it is a 
very creditable feeling, and adds to the respect and 
liking which the Breton character inspires, that 
there should be this tenderness for the old horse, 
who has ploughed the fields and borne burdens un- 
til his strength is spent ; for the old goat, who has 
given milk for the children ; and even for the pig, 
who has inhabited the pen by the cabin. In the 
folk-songs this feeling is represented by various 
pieces of verse, giving the last wills and testaments 
of old animals, who bequeath, sometimes in a spirit 
of humor, and sometimes with affectionate tender- 
ness, portions of their bodies and qualities of their 
spirits to their human friends and companions. 
There is thus the testament of the goat, the old 
sow, and the old mare. The latter displays a 
touching feeling, and the impression of quaint 
absurdity gives way to a more tender emotion and 
that touch of pathos which is evoked by all animal 
affection and animal suffering. 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWEE BEITTANY. 217 



THE WILL OF THE OLD MARE. 

Between Pontrieaux and Kerlouet 
Is dead an old mare. 

She cried, the old mare, 
To have her shoes pulled off. 

She cried loud enough to split her voice, 
— Pull the nails from my sabots. 

It is eighteen months, without falsehood, 
Since I have been in a stable. 

If it is not in the great barnyard of Kerlouet, 
There I have often lodged. 

I bequeath my patience 
To him, Oliver le Judic. 

Which he has cruelly proved this year, 
In that he has lost his wife. 

In that this year his wife is dead. 

To live without one's half is not a pleasant thing. 

I pray to give the hairs of my tail, 
To him, Pierre Perrot. 

That he may make a light fly-flap 

To keep the flies from the horses in summer. 



218 FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 

And when the other horses fling and kick, 
He will remember the blind mare. 

Carry my head to the ferry of Frinaoudour, 
To serve as a little boat upon the water. 

To pass from one bank to the other 
Those who go to hunt at Plourivo. 

Those who go to hunt at Plourivo, 
The rabbit, the fox and the wild duck. 



sj 



As has been said, the chief value of folk-song is 
in its genuineness, in the accuracy with which it 
reflects not only the emotions, but the habits and 
customs of the people, so that their peculiar life 
becomes visible before our eyes. There is an inde- 
finable charm, not only in the impression of reality, 
but in the very rudeness and imperfection of the 
speech, which gives an effect beyond literary art, 
when deep emotion or domestic pathos are seen 
through it. We seem to get nearer the primitive 
heart of mankind than under the effect of the most 
accomplished literary skill, and there are awakened 
the homely and tender feelings which lie deep 
within our nature. The genuine fairy tale created 
by the vivid and credulous imagination of the 
uncultivated mind, and the genuine folk-song, the 
outburst of simple and natural emotion, take a 
hold upon even the most cultivated intellects as the 



FOLK-SONGS OF LOWER BRITTANY. 219 

highest literary art fails to do. The folk-songs of 
Brittany have this charm as well as their own pe- 
culiar provincial flavor ; and the very crudeness 
and imperfection of the Sonniou in M. Luzel's 
collection have more power than all the elaborate 
poetry and picturesqueness of M. Villemarque's 
Celtic fabrications. 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 

While there is much that is common in the 
folk-songs of all the provinces of France, the same 
stories and the same turns of expression, showing, 
if not a common origin, a very wide and thorough 
intercommunication, — as, for instance, in the beau- 
tiful and pathetic ballad of Jean Renaud, which is 
found almost everywhere in slightly differing vari- 
ants, — each section has its own local peculiarities 
illustrating the temperament and the origin of the 
people. It is needless to say that there is a strongly 
marked note of difference between the melancholy 
and finely sensitive songs of the people of Brittany 
and the gay and joyous chants and ballads of those 
of Gascony and Provence. It would be inevitable 
from the widely different natures of the two 
people, and their origin from distinct and strongly 
divergent native stocks. But this distinction goes 
further, and marked shades of difference in feeling 
and sentiment may be found in the character and 
temperament of the folk-songs and music of the in- 
habitants of the same province, who are of common 
origin and consanguinity, with the same native Ian- 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 221 

guage, and the same habits and customs. This is 
due in a great measure to a difference in their sur- 
roundings, and the influence of external nature, 
whether gay or morose, fertile or barren, upon the 
minds and characters of the people. Thus in his 
splendid collection of the Chants and Chansons 
Populaires des Provinces de l'Ouest, M. Jerome 
Burgeaud tells us that the plaintive and melancholy- 
airs of the inhabitants of the deep woods and heavy- 
marshes of La Vendee become gay and cheerful in 
Poitou, and sparkle with brilliant mirth in Sain- 
tonge and the Angumois, without changing their 
notes or form, simply from the difference in the 
scenery and its influence upon the spirits of the 
people. The ancient Poitou, comprising the upper 
portion of the region between the Loire and Ga- 
ronne, is full of smiling and rich fields, where the 
grapes burgeon in deep black clusters, and the yellow 
wheat-ears hang heavy and full, and the warm sun 
and the savory air fill the blood of the people with 
lightness and gayety. They are not so ebullient 
and joyous, it may be, as the inhabitants of the 
still warmer and more smiling regions of Gascony 
and Languedoc, but the contrast is very marked 
between them and their northern neighbors, whose 
very mirth has a melancholy tinge, and in whom 
even drunkenness is a protest against sorrow rather 
than the natural extravagance of light-heartedness. 



222 TEE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 

The Poitevin peasant is naturally gay, and his 
light-heartedness is manifested in the great number, 
as well as in the good humor and cheerfulness, of 
his folk-songs. Of course the common sorrows of 
mankind weigh upon him ; he feels the stings of 
poverty and the pains and sordidness of labor ; the 
conscription tears him from his home and his be- 
loved ; and he experiences the tragedies of love and 
death. These things stir his mind and find a place 
in his folk-songs, but the prevailing spirit which 
governs his expression in music and song is not of 
melancholy brooding and sorrow, like that of his 
Celtic neighbors, but gayety and joyousness. He 
finds the smiling world a pleasant place to live in ; 
his love is the natural and happy ebullition of his 
warm temperament ; and his experiences of life are 
cheerful. 

The gayety of the Poitevin temperament finds its 
expression in the immense number of " rounds " as 
they are called in English, which give the vocal 
measure and accompaniment to the vigorous and 
joyous dances. The youths and the maidens, when 
they meet at the rustic gatherings, or even in the 
intervals of labor in the fields, join hands by 
a natural instinct, and improvise a dance to the 
rhythm of their own voices, and the " rounds " which 
they sing, although often mere nonsense, or at least 
without a consecutive meaning, have a note of 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 223 

gayety and an ebullition of joyousness, which is 
inimitable, as thus : — 

Vous, qui menez la ronde, 
Menez la rondement. 

Son cotillon en branle, en branle, 
Son cotillon en branle au vent. 

Foule, foule, foulons l'herbe, 
L'herbe foule reviendra. 

Brnnette, allons, gai, gai, gai, 
Brunette, allons, gai, gaiment. 

— words which interpret the air and accent the 
steps with an absolute perfection, which a trans- 
lation cannot render, although it may give an idea 
of the vivacity and entrain. 

You, who lead the round, 
Lead it roundily. 

Her petticoat in motion, in motion, 
Her petticoat in motion to the wind. 

Tread, tread, come tread the grass, 
The trodden grass will spring again 

Brunette, come, gay, gay, gay, 
Brunette, come, gay, gaily. 

All these, like the ancient choruses with which 
the Greek maidens accompanied their dances 



224 THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 

of "woven paces and waving hands," with or with- 
out the note of a primitive reed to accent the mel- 
ody, are reproduced in the grosser spirit of the 
laboring peasant, but equally instinctive with life 
and gayety, and the natural expression of youthful 
existence in the open air and under balmy skies. 

One of the most characteristic features of the 
Poitevin peasant is his cunning, his fondness for 
rustic ruses, and the sharp repartee or trick, which 
puts to shame the person of a station above his 
own. The heroines of many of his favorite ballads 
and songs are endowed with this quality, and he 
chuckles with a hearty zest at the simple wit with 
which the shrewd shepherdess puts down the amor- 
ous gallant learned in the schools, or escapes the 
dangerous importunity of a gentleman on the high- 
way or a seignorial hunter in the fields. The folk- 
songs of Poitou are full of such examples, and M. 
Bugeaud, and M. Leon Pineau, who has followed 
him in gleaning in the same field (Le Folk-Lore 
du Poitou), have given a number of specimens. 
The following shows what simple repartee appeals 
to the rustic sense of humor : — 

NANON. 

What is there, Nanon, 

In these valleys green ? 
There is a fool, kind sir, 

When you are therein. 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 225 

Pray tell me, Nanon, 

Where does this road go ? 
When you have found out, 

Then you will know. 

Come, my dear Nanon, 

Under the green shade. 
Would you have me think 

Of heat you 're afraid ? 

Is he then happy, 

The shepherd you know ? 
If he is unhappy, 

He does n't seem so. 

You love him, Nanon, 

As I adore you ? 
Yes, indeed, kind sir, 

And much better too. 

Pray tell me, Nanon, 

Who made you so smart ? 
You, too, have studied, 

And learned things by heart. 

In my father's house, 

I have studied deep. — 
I got my learning 

In watching my sheep. 

One of the favorite ruses is that by which the 
shepherd maid induces the gallant to let her go, on 
some frivolous excuse and a promise to return, and 



226 THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 

then mocks him for his credulity. A similar jest, 
with the proverb that when you hold a quail in 
hand you should pluck it, is very common in 
French folk-song, as, indeed, in that of all nations. 
This is one of the Poitevin versions : — 

THE SHEPHERDESS AND THE GENTLEMAN. 

It was a gentleman returning from the army, 

Upon the road he met a shepherd maid ; 
He dismounted quickly, and went to sit beside her. 

Cunning was the maid, and wept as if afraid. 

" Have mercy, gentleman, you '11 spoil my fine, white cap, 
I '11 go and put it off, and come back quite soon." 
The gallant gentleman found the time quite tedious, 
The maiden did not come ; he whistled a blank tune. 

" John, my little John, go and tell the maiden 

To come back at once, for she must be asleep." 

" Good fortune it is to me that I have got away, 
By the grace of God I have no shame to weep." 

" Little John returned to where his master waited, 
Whistling a blank tune beneath the willow tree, 

" Alas, my master, the maid is very cunning ; 
She is safe at home, and sends you mockery." 

The gallant ceased his tune, and swore in bitter anger, 

" If again that maid I meet by any hap, 
Either in the highroad, or on the flowery meadow, 

I will have no mercy on her fine, white cap." 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 227 

Then the love songs of Poitou have a light and 
humorous turn, a jest at the fickleness of the run- 
away lover, and the easy consolation of the young 
maiden, whose desire is more to have a lover than 
that he should be any particular person. La Belle 
Rosalie illustrates this gay mockery of youthful 
love. 

THE FAIR ROSALIE. 

The fair Rosalie 

Has lost her lover bold, 
Is n't she unhappy, 

Only fifteen years old ! 

He promised to return, — 

The deep woods were to blame, — 

But she has waited vainly ; 
The traitor never came. 

" Nightingale that sings, 
Nightingale that flies, 
Tell me, tell me truly, 
Where my lover lies." 

" Your lover, maiden fair, 

Has gone across the Rhine. 
Captains three are with him, 
And he is brave and fine. 

" Exchange your woman's dress 
For a soldier's coat of blue : 



228 THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 

In thirty days you '11 find him, 
If you his route pursue." 

When she arrived at Bruges, 

She found her lover there, 
Training with the soldiers, 

With banners floating fair. 

" If I had known, my dear, 

You would have followed me, 
You would not have found me, 
For I 'd have crossed the sea." 

" Am I not unhappy, 

To march so far to find 

The traitor, whom I love, 

And who is so unkind ? 

" Nightingale that sings, 

And who hast flown so far, 
Tell me, tell me truly, 
Where other lovers are." 

But all the other lads 

Have sought for other brides, 
And taken for their spouses 

The sabres at their sides. 

The Veille des Noces gayly mocks the impatience 
of the young maiden for the dawn of her wedding 
day, which will not allow her to rest quiet in bed, 
or endure without reply the rebuke of her more 
contented mother : — 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 229 

THE NIGHT BEFORE MY WEDDING. 

The night before my wedding, 

Guess what happened me. 
I rose up to the window, 
If daybreak I could see — 
The dawn of day, 
The lovely dawn of day, 
Of light and love so gay. 

I rose up to my window, 

If daybreak I could see, 
The lovely moon still shining 

Was all that greeted me. 

The lovely moon still shining, 

Was all the sign of light. 
I thought it must be four o'clock, 

But 't was not yet midnight. 

I thought it must be four o'clock, 

But midnight had not sped. 
My mother, who was listening, 

Heard the cross words I said. 

My mother, who was listening, 
Heard the sad sighs I drew. 
" Be silent, little fool," she said, 
" Or God will punish you ! 

" Be silent, little fool," she said, 
Or God will bring you loss." 



230 THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 

" O, mother dear, do you not know 
What 't is that makes me cross ? 



" O, mother dear, do you not know, 
What 't is that gives me pain, 
You lie at ease, but I do not ; 
I must get up again." 

There is also a flavor of mockery in the naive 
dialogue between the shepherd, Joseph, and his 
mistress, whom he has come to waken in the morn- 
ing, and to invite to spend the day with him on the 
mountain. The shepherdess wants to be assured 
of something more substantial than mere affection 
before she yields to the temptation. 

JOSEPH. 

Joseph, your faithful shepherd, 

Has come to waken you, 
Arise, my lovely maiden, 

My lovely maiden, rise — 
The sun shines bright and new. 

Alas, my faithful shepherd, 

Whither shall we go ? 
Above, upon the mountains 

Where shining streamlets flow, 
Where we will gather violets, 

And rosemary also. 

Alas, my faithful shepherd, 
What shall be our food ? 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 231 

A pie of tender larks, 

And cakes so sweet and good, 
And see, beneath my mantle 
A flask of grapes' rich blood. 

Alas, my faithful shepherd, 
In what place shall we sleep ? 

Above, in my thatched cottage, 
Within the wood so deep. 

I have a place of shelter 
Wherein no cold can creep. 

Alas, my faithful shepherd, 

What if my father knew ? 
Tell him, my beloved, 

That your shepherd true 
Came upon the mountain 

To keep the wolf from you. 

In Le Berger qui me fait le Cour, the shepherd- 
ess displays more grace and sentiment in refusing 
to point out the identity of her lover, while avowing 
her charming and spontaneous affection. 

THE SHEPHERD WHO MAKES LOVE TO ME. 

The shepherd who makes love to me, 
The shepherd who makes love to me, 
Is the bravest you can see. 
Ask me not to tell you more. 



I lead my sheep upon the plain, 
I lead my sheep upon the plain, 



232 THE FOLK-SONGS -OF POITOU. 

And my cows to browse again. 
Ask me not to tell you more. 

My lambkins feed along the glade, 
My lambkins feed along the glade, 
And I am seated in the shade. 
Ask me not to tell you more. 

My shepherd comes to see me there, 
My shepherd comes to see me there, 
And tells me I am sweet and fair. 
Ask me not to tell you more. 

In listening to his love words deep, 
In listening to his love words deep, 
My eyelids close ; I 'm charmed to sleep. 
Ask me not to tell you more. 

I dream my shepherd is a dove, 
I dream my shepherd is a dove, 
And my fond heart his cage of love, 
Ask me not to tell you more. 

The maiden surprised by her lover as she lies 
asleep beneath the shade is a favorite subject in all 
folk-poetry, but it is seldom that it has been treated 
with a greater grace and charm than in La Belle 
Endormie. The sentiment has all the simplicity 
and purity of spontaneous love, and the language 
the sweet naivete' of folk-song, however much of 
its charm may have vanished in the translation. 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 233 

THE FAIR ONE ASLEEP. 

In walking in the garden, 

To shun the burning light, 
I saw beneath the leafage 

A maid of beauty bright. 
With noiseless feet I crept 
To where the damsel slept. 

With noiseless feet I tip-toed 

To give her no alarm, 
Her head had for a pillow 

Her round and rosy arm, 
As softly as the air 
I kissed her dreaming there. 

And while she lay in slumber, 

I sought a garden bed, 
And on her snowy bosom 

I placed a rosebud red. 
The flower's breath of balm 
Dispelled her slumber's charm. 

When slumber's charm had vanished, 

She woke with laughing eyes ; 
Oh, magic love, how charming 

To catch hearts by surprise! 
To wake them like the dawn, 
When spring-time is new-born. 

In the bosquet of Pouzange 
I meet my faithful loves. 



234 THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 

They murmur in the leafage, 

Sweet tender-throated doves. 
They sing the whole day long, 
And love is all their song. 

But there is a sadder note which makes itself 
heard in these songs of love in Poitou, as else- 
where, — the lamentation of the maiden who has 
listened too fondly to the words of her shepherd 
lover, and experienced his faithlessness. She must 
hide at home with her shame, and sadly find that 
only her dog is faithful. 

IT WAS THE SPRING SIX MONTHS AGO. 

It was the spring six months ago, 
And in the fresh, green fields below, 
My bleating flock around me fed, 
While watching them I spun my thread, 
And naught of sin or shame did know. 

But Colin came one evening fair, 
With tender words beguiled me there ; 
" Dear shepherdess, come take my arm, 
Lest lonely roads should bring you harm, 
And ghosts or wolves in darkness scare." 

In his my trusting hand I place, 
While love invades me with its grace ; 
I could not check his passion's strength, 
And wished the road of greater length, 
While listening with a blushing face. 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 235 

But Colin has a faithless mind, 

Inconstant as the changing wind. 

While I shamefaced must hide at home, 
Vainly asking when my love will come, 

But my dog alone is true and kind. 

The conscription, which compels the peasant, 
who has drawn the fatal number, to leave his na- 
tive fields and his mistress, is an important and 
disturbing influence in the rural life of France, 
and finds a frequent place in its folk-song. Some- 
times it is taken gayly, and the lover departs in 
high spirits, singing along the road to the garri- 
son with his companions, and promising fidelity to 
his mistress to whom he hopes soon to return. It 
is thus in the gay song Voici l'Hiver Passe. 

THE WINTER IT IS PAST. 

The winter it is past, 

The freezing frost and snow, 

The springtime it has come, 
And to the fields we go. 

Above, upon the hilltop, 

The flowers bright and blue, 

The little singing birds 
Their joyful songs renew. 

They say in tender tones, 
In language sweet and clear, 



236 THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 

That every pretty maiden 
Should have a lover dear. 

But mine has gone away, 

A soldier's trade to learn 
In service at Bordeaux, 

But he will soon return. 

We go, my comrades brave, 
Let 's bid our girls good-by, 

Give them a parting kiss, 
And tell them not to cry. 

With knapsack on the back, 

We make a brave convoy. 
We march along the road 

With gallant songs of joy. 

At Bordeaux, when you come, 

And other girls you see, 
You '11 make another choice, 

And think no more of me. 

When I am at Bordeaux, 

Fond letters I will write, 
And give them to the clouds, 

That pass with bosoms white. 

There will be within them, 

In letters deep and clear, 
That I will always be 

Your lover true and dear. 

But the circumstances are not always so cheerful 
nor the songs so gay. There is a tragedy, when, 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 237 

moved by an irresistible longing, the unfortunate 
conscript has deserted the ranks, been captured by 
his comrades, and condemned to suffer the penalty 
of his weakness in a shameful death. The old 
songs have many subjects of that kind, whose 
memory lingers, although the penalty for desertion 
is now less severe. One of them is Le Deserteur, 
whose deeply plaintive air, and the melopceism of 
its verse, as well as its simple tragedy, have kept 
it alive. 

THE DESERTER. 

" For eight long years within the troop I served, 
Without a furlough to relieve my pain. 
The longing took me to desert the ranks, 
To my fair land to turn my steps again. 

" I had a luckless meeting on my way, 

Three grenadiers before me made a halt. 
With handcuffs hard and cold they bound my hands, 
And led me to Bordeaux to a prison vault. 

" Ah, is it then for love of a brown maid, 
That in a cell I lie in dismal mood ; 
My only couch the hard planks of the floor, 

Water and black bread my only drink and food." 

But when the maiden heard these words of grief, 
Both night and day she walked her love to see. 
" Courage, my dear love," through the grate she said, 
" I will find out a way to rescue thee. 



238 THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 

" I will run out, and seek your captain kind, 

Your captain kind, and your brave colonel too. 
I will beseech them, and implore a pardon, 
I will give them gold to free my lover true ! " 

" I am deeply grieved, my little shepherdess, 

That for this grenadier you should moan and cry. 
Before the court of war he must soon appear, 
And at the drum will be condemned to die ! " 

When the maiden heard the cruel words he said, 
Her cheeks grew white that were so rosy red. 

The captain threw his arm around her waist, 
And kindly bade her lift her drooping head. 

" Fair shepherdess, take me for your lover, 

I will love you well, and free your heart from pain." 
Tears within her eyes, and kerchief to her face, 
" No, no," she said, " I cannot love again." 

But the soldier or the sailor after long years of 
service gets leave to return to his home on a fur- 
lough or a discharge. Sometimes he is welcomed 
by his aged parents or his faithful wife, who recog- 
nize him with joyful surprise, in spite of his rags 
and wounds ; and sometimes he finds that his long 
absence has wrought fatal changes, that his parents 
are dead, or his wife, deceived by false news of his 
death, has married again. Incidents of this latter 
kind are familiar in folk-song, but there is none 
where the story is more simply and dramatically 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 239 

told, or where the conduct of the unfortunate hus- 
band shows such pathetic refinement of feeling, than 
in La Femme du Marin, which is one of the best- 
known and popular of the old songs of Poitou. 
The air is charmingly soft and melancholy, and the 
words display a skill in melody which the most 
accomplished poet might envy. A more felicitous 
verse can hardly be found in the whole annals of 
folk-song than this : — 

Quand le marin revient de guerre, 

Tout doux. 
Quand le marin revient de guerre, 

Tout doux. 
Tout nial chausse', tout mal vetu, 
Pauvre marin du reviens tu ? 

Tout doux. 

It is hardly necessary to apologize for the imper- 
fection of an attempt to render such a flower of 
poetry into another language. 

THE WIFE OF THE MAKINE. 1 

When the marine came from the war, 

Good and kind. 
When the marine came from the war, 

Good and kind. 
With ragged coat and battered shoe. 

1 I have translated marin as "marine " instead of sailor, as in 
the last verse it is said that he goes back to his " regiment." 



240 THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 

Poor marine, from whence come you ? 
Good and kind. 



Madame, I come from the war, 

Good and kind. 
Madame, I come from the war, 

Good and kind. 
Bring me now a brimming glass, 
That I may drink it as I pass, 

Good and kind. 

The brave marine begins to drink, 

Good and kind. 
The brave marine begins to drink, 

Good and kind. 
Drinks and sings a ballad gay, 
While madame wipes the tears away, 

Good and kind. 

What troubles you, my fair hostess ? 

Good and kind. 
What troubles you, my fair hostess ? 

Good and kind. 
Do you regret the kindly glass, 
That you give me as I pass ? 

Good and kind. 

I don't regret my good white wine, 

Good and kind. 
I don't regret my good white wine, 

Good and kind. 
A husband's loss bedims my eyes, 
For in your looks his image lies, 

Good and kind. 



THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. 241 

Ah, tell me now, my fair hostess, 

Good and kind. 
Ah, tell me now, my fair hostess, 

Good and kind. 
Children three he left behind, 
But now three more with you I find, 

Good and kind. 

I had a letter from the war, 

Good and kind. 
I had a letter from the war, 

Good and kind. 
Which said my brave marine was dead, 
I thought it true ; again I wed, 

Good and kind. 

The brave marine drank out his glass, 

Good and kind. 
The brave marine drank out his glass, 

Good and kind. 
Without a word, while soft tears flowed, 
To his corps went back his road, 

Good and kind. 



SOME ANCIENT PORTUGUESE 
BALLADS. 

The larger and more important literature of 
Spain has naturally drawn a wider attention than 
that of its smaller neighbor in the Iberian penin- 
sula. The great achievements of Spanish genius in 
the era of its intellectual efflorescence have com- 
pelled the intellectual world to study its language 
and familiarize itself with its literature. And not 
only have the great works of Cervantes and Cal- 
deron and Lope de Yega been studied and criti- 
cised, and reproduced in all the cultivated lan- 
guages of Europe, but the treasures of popular 
Spanish poetry, with their rich elements of chiv- 
alry and romantic passion, have been carefully 
studied and exemplified by foreign scholars, and 
been the inspiration of foreign poets and transla- 
tors. Hardly any country in Europe has a more 
valuable collection of popular poetry in the times 
of its military and intellectual greatness, or which 
more thoroughly illustrates its history or the char- 
acteristics of its national temperament. The long 
chronicles of the Cid, and the ballad narratives of 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS, 243 

the exploits of the heroes of the great struggles for 
the expulsion of the Moors, form in themselves 
a rich body of national poetry, but they are sup- 
plemented by an immeuse number of episodical 
ballads relating to events in national history, and 
lyrical poems and songs expressing the strong 
feeling and intellectual energy of the people. 
Many scholars and poets of eminence in European 
countries have devoted themselves to the reproduc- 
tion of these Spanish national poems in their own 
languages, and in England during the early part 
of the present century there was a strong bent of 
scholarship in that direction, induced to a con- 
siderable extent, probably, by the national interest 
in the Peninsular war. Southey, Scott, and John 
Hookham Frere gave admirable translations of 
Spanish national poems, and the spirited versions 
of ancient Spanish ballads by Lockhart have been 
justly considered a permanent addition to English 
poetry. 

But no such degree of attention has been paid 
to Portuguese literature, although it possesses the 
same national characteristics as the Spanish, and 
is not inferior, except in volume, as regards the 
product of popular poetry and folk-song. This was 
natural enough. Except the great poem of Cam- 
oens, Portuguese literature possesses no master- 
piece to compel the attention of the civilized world, 



244 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

and the product of its national genius is not of the 
bulk and importance of that of Spain. Its na- 
tional characteristics were similar, so that indepen- 
dent study was not incited by original features, 
while the difference in language was sufficient to 
be a barrier to all except special scholars. The 
country was in a measure overwhelmed and over- 
shadowed by Spain, although possessing indepen- 
dent and interesting features of its own, and has 
been regarded as a province rather than as an origi- 
nal country. Very little attention has been paid 
in foreign countries to Portuguese popular litera- 
ture, although some French and German scholars 
have included it in their studies, and there is no 
volume in English, so far as I am aware, which 
deals with it. At the same time it is well worth 
attention in its richness and value in all the quali- 
ties which make a high order of popular poetry, 
and in those elements of chivalric feeling, dramatic 
incident, and intensity of passion which character- 
ize Spanish poetry of the same period. Fortu- 
nately Portugal itself has shared in that interest, 
which has spread through all the civilized coun- 
tries of Europe in ancient popular literature and 
folk-song, and its national scholars have devoted 
a painstaking care and interest to collecting and 
elucidating its ancient ballads. The pioneer in 
this work was Almeida Garrett, himself a distin- 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 245 

guished poet, who, being compelled to take refuge 
in England by the political disturbances of 1820, 
came under the influence of Sir Walter Scott as 
regards the work which he had done for the na- 
tional literature of Scotland. Like Scott he at 
first wrote imitations of the old ballads with their 
literary style and phrases. These, like all other 
imitations of ancient ballads, although full of 
strength and poetical power, had not the genuine 
naturalness of antiquity and the inimitable flavor 
of primitive art. Later, on his return to Portu- 
gal, Almeida Garrett set himself to work to col- 
lect the ancient Portuguese ballads, as Scott had 
done those of the Scottish border, and was almost 
equally successful. The backwardness of the Por- 
tuguese peasantry in education, and their compara- 
tive seclusion from the influences of modern civil- 
ization in their mountains and valleys, contributed 
very much to the preservation of their ancient bal- 
lads, and even to-day they are a part of the oral 
literature of the country. There were of course 
many ancient ballads, in written and printed forms, 
which were preserved in libraries and in the pa- 
pers of old families, but the great bulk of Almeida 
Garrett's collection was derived from oral tradi- 
tion. He followed the example of Scott in uniting 
the best forms of varying versions into a complete 
and harmonious whole, and it is hardly doubtful 



246 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

that he also supplied an occasional wanting or im- 
perfect line. But his general faithfulness and 
respect for the originals have been abundantly 
proved by the work of later collectors. The pop- 
ular poetry of Portugal owes no less to Almeida 
Garrett than that of Scotland does to Scott, and 
he inculcated a pride in national history and na- 
tional literature by his genius, as well as rescued 
the remains of ancient popular poetry by his pains- 
taking care. Since his time he has been followed 
by other Portuguese scholars, who have worked 
under the restrictions of more absolute faithfulness 
and historic research imposed by the modern study 
of folk-lore. Notably Signor Braga has published 
two very valuable volumes, Komanceiro Greral, re- 
lating to the popular poetry of Portugal, and the 
Cantos Populares do Archipelago Acoriario, the 
songs of the Azore islands, whose seclusion from 
the world has been very favorable to the preser- 
vation of the ancient popular poetry and folk-lore. 
There are others who have made national collec- 
tions, and the folk-songs of the various provinces, 
so that now the popular poetry of Portugal has 
been as carefully gathered and preserved as that 
of any other nation of Europe. 

The popular poetry of Portugal had its period 
of efflorescence contemporaneous with that of Spain, 
and covered the period of its national energy and 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 247 

enterprise. The oldest specimens now extant are 
not considered to date beyond the fifteenth century, 
although, of course, they may have derived their 
origin from still more ancient ballads. The greater 
part is included within the two centuries follow- 
ing, when the national mind still preserved the 
spring and energy which had accomplished such 
great achievements in navigation and enterprise, 
and before its spirit had been crushed into the nar- 
row bounds of a restricted and decaying province. 
Contrary, however, to the condition of the national 
poetry in Spain, the allusions to the actual events 
of recorded history are somewhat rare, and, 
although the actions of kings and national heroes 
make some figure, for the most part they relate to 
popular traditions, which have but a vague connec- 
tion with national history. In style and manner, 
however, they bear a close resemblance to the 
Spanish popular poems, and in many instances 
they appear but as slightly differing variants, 
although it is doubtful which may have been the 
original, the Spanish or the Portuguese. The bal- 
lad of Dom Yanno, which is a specimen of the 
longer popular romances, is similar, except in its 
termination, to the Castilian romance known under 
the title of the Count Alarcos, and which has been 
translated by Lockhart under the title of Count 
Alarcos and the Infanta Solisa. In the Spanish 



248 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

romance the count actually fulfills the commands 
of the king by murdering his spouse, but before her 
death she cites the king and the infanta to appear 
within thirty days before the judgment seat of God, 
and it is accomplished by their deaths in that time. 
There are numerous variants to the ballad in 
Spanish popular literature, and it has been made 
the subject of dramas by Lope deVega and others. 
Its connection with actual history is unknown. 

DOM YANNO. 

The princess wept and wept again ; the reason for her tears 
And that her life had little joy within her royal house, 
Was that her father had forgot for slowly passing years 
To dower her in marriage with some rich and noble spouse. 

Her mourning was so deep one night, the king woke in his 
bed. 

" What. troubles you, my daughter dear, why do you weep 
and mourn ? " 

" Of your three daughters, royal sire, alone I am not wed. 

Therefore my days are dark and dull ; therefore I am for- 
lorn." 

" What remedy is there for that ? I 'm not the one to blame ; 
Ambassadors from Aquitaine and lords from Normandy, 
When with noble marriage proffers in suppliance they came, 
You would not hearken to at all, nor treat with courtesy." 

" Of all the nobles of my court not one is there I see, 
Except Count Yanno, who in wealth and lineage of pride 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 249 

Can for a single instant seem a worthy spouse for thee, 
And he has taken to his house a fair and noble bride." 



" O noble father of my soul, you 've named the very one. 
If he already has a wife, and even children too, 
He owes another pledge to me, for my weak heart he won. 
He gave to me his solemn word, and I believed it true." 

The king sent summons to the count to come where he awaits. 
He had not thought what he should do, or e'en what he 

should say. 
" 'T is but a single moment since I left the palace gates, 
And now the king demands me back ; what does it mean, I 

pray ? " 

Count Yanno enters in the hall ; the king straight to him goes. 
" My lord, I humbly kiss your hands ; what is your royal 

will?" 
" You may kiss them for the honor the king on thee bestows, 
In wedlock take my daughter's hand, and your sworn troth 

fulfill." 

Count Yanno, when he heard these words, was struck with 

mortal dread. 
" My royal master, I 've a wife with whom I live in bliss." 
" Go kill your wife without delay, and then my daughter wed." 
" What ! kill my wife, so innocent ! What black command is 

this ! " 

"Be silent, Count, your insolence I will not suffer now. 
One cannot trick a royal maid like any simple slave." 
" My lord, before your righteous rage in penitence I bow, 
That I may pay the debt alone is all I humbly crave." 



250 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

" That I should kill an innocent, who 's never done a wrong, 
Such deadly treason would o'erwhelm my soul with shame 

and sin. 
The life of earth in punishment to justice would belong, 
And in the life beyond the grave no pardon could I win." 

" The^Countess is a burden here, and therefore must she die ; 
In that gilt basin bring her head, all dripping with its gore." 
Count Yanno left the cruel king, his soul in agony, 
And followed the dark page, whose arms the fatal basin bore. 

The page was clad in mourning garb, the Count in sad array, 
As if in pain of parting breath his heart with anguish 

swelled, 
The Countess ran to meet him, as she saw him far away ; 
Her husband and her little child in one embrace she held. 

" Well come — well come, Count, for my joy ; " but not a 

word he said, 
He mounted slowly up the steps, and locked and barred the 

door ; 
Then bade the wondering servants the supper table spread : 
The household marveled at a mien they 'd never seen before, 

They did not touch the food or wine, but sat in sad unrest. 
The tears welled from Count Yanno's eyes ; he bent to kiss 

the child, 
That to his mother's warm, soft breast his rosy lips had prest : 
The infant turned to meet the kiss, and like an angel smiled. 

To see that mingled smile and kiss, her heart in sobs broke 

out, 
The echoes of her bursting grief filled all the lofty room : 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 251 

a What troubles you, my best beloved ; resolve this dreadful 

doubt, 
What is the order of the king that fills you so with gloom ? " 

The Count choked down his sudden sobs, he could no answer 

make. 
She clasped his neck and on his mouth she pressed a frantic 

kiss. 
" Take from my heart this agony I suffer for your sake, 
Let me partake your sorrow, dear, and you shall share my 

bliss." 

The woeful pair from table rose, and sought in bed to rest, 
But slumber came not to their eyes, to give their pains 

relief. 
" By the good God in heaven above, and Virgin Mary blest, 
My very life I 'd sooner give than see you in such grief." 

" May death revenge such black command ; perish his tyr- 
anny ! 

My Count, I do not understand what 't is he bids thee do ; 

Upon my life and soul, my love, reveal it now to me, 

This dreadful shadow of ill fate that comes between us 
two." 

" The fate of an ill-fated one, and no help can there be, 
The king commands that I kill thee, and the Infanta wed." 
Scarce had these dreadful words been spoke in stifled agony 
When the unhappy Countess fell, as if her life had fled. 

God did not give her death's relief, tho' better she had 

died 
For anguish deeper far than death recalled life to her heart, 



252 ANCIENT POBTUGUESE BALLADS. 

" Wait, wait, Count Yanno, kill me not, but let me go and hide 
In my dear father's distant house, where I can dwell apart. 

" There I will live a maid again, and keep my true troth- 
plight ; 
There I will rear this infant, and guard him from all sin ; 
Though sorrow lies between us two, he '11 be my dear delight, 
And I '11 be faithful to my love as I have always been." 

" How can that be, my best beloved, it is the king's black will 
Within that gilded basin there to see your severed head." 
" Wait, wait, Count Yanno, kill me not, I have a refuge still ; 
The cloistered nuns will guard me, when to their cells I 've 
fled. 

" My bread be measured by the ounce, my drink quench not 

my thirst, 
Then speedily my death will come, nor will the princess 

know." 
" How can that be, my best beloved, since in that basin curst 
I must thy severed head before the king and princess show." 

"Enclose me in a dungeon dark, where neither sun nor moon 
Shall light the hours I count by sighs until my life has fled." 
" How can that be, my best beloved ? the hour will come full 

soon 
When in that gilded basin there the king must see your 

head." 

The king knocked harshly at the door as these last words 

were said : 
"If the Countess still is living, quick, quick, make haste to 

slay." 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 253 

" The Countess says her orisons, but soon she will be dead, 
And in a single moment's space her soul will pass away." 

" Oh, let me say a final prayer to bid the world good-night." 
" Make haste to say it, my beloved, for daybreak I can see." 
"Oh, God and Virgin Mary blest, I cannot pray aright; 
It is not death afflicts me so, but shameful treachery. 

u I pity you more than myself, for your base cowardice ; 
With your own hand you take my life, though reason there 

is none 
Except the wicked princess' hand will pay the shameful price. 
May God forgive you at the hour you stand before his 

throne ! 

" Oh, let me say my last farewell to all I 've loved so dear, 
The flower of Alexandria, the roses red and white, 
The little tender violets, the fountain waters clear, 
I 've tended you with love and care ; the princess' hand will 
blight. 

" Give me my child, fruit of my womb, in my weak arms to 

hold, 
That he may feed upon the breast that swells with its last 

breath. 
It is my blood that he will drink, that runs so faint and cold. 
Drink, little infant, drink the milk that 's tinged with bitter 

death. 
To-day you have a mother dear, who loves you tenderly, 
To-morrow a step-mother harsh, of loftiest degree." 

The great church bell tolls heavily. Ah, Jesus, who is dead ? 
The infant's lips by miracle this wondrous answer made : 



254 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

" The princess, choked with wickedness ; her soul in sin has 
fled; 

To part such dear and faithful loves God's holy might for- 
bade ! " 

The ballad of The Ship Catharine is one of the 
best known and most popular among the folk-songs 
of Portugal. Various attempts have been made 
by Almeida Garrett, Braga, and others to attach 
it to some historical event, but without satisfactory- 
success, and, indeed, its character is such that it 
is apparent that it belongs rather to the order of in- 
definite romance. The incidents in regard to the 
drawing of the lots to see who shall be eaten, and 
the ascent of the sailor to look for land, are to be 
found in the folk-songs of various maritime na- 
tions. One of them has been found in Brittany 
and has been preserved by M. Luzel in the Gwer- 
zion Breiz-Izel. It relates that a vessel, which had 
been voyaging for twenty-seven years upon the 
high seas, naturally fell short of provisions, and the 
crew were compelled to think of eating each other : 

" And when they had drawn for the short straw, 
it was the master of the vessel to whom it fell — 
Great God, is it possible that my sailors will eat 
me?" 

" Little page, little page, you who are quick and 
nimble — go to the top of the main mast to find 
out where we are." 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 255 

" And he mounted singing, and descended weep- 
ing — I have been to the top of the main mast and 
have not seen any land." 

" Go again to the top of the main mast to 
find out where we are — It will be for the last 
time." 

" He mounted weeping, and he descended singing 
— I believe that we are restored to land — I have 
seen the tower of Babylon," etc. 

A ballad, The Little Midshipman, in the popular 
songs of Provence, is very similar in incident and 
language to The Ship Catharine, with a change in 
the localities, the midshipman seeing Toulon and 
Marseilles instead of the coasts of Portugal and 
Spain. In later French folk-song the ballad has 
become a burlesque after the fashion of Mal- 
brook, and is known as II etait un Petit Navire. 
This in its turn was developed in the after-dinner 
song of Thackeray, "There were three sailors 
of Bristol city," and is an instance of the persist- 
ence of folk-song, even though changed in form 
and purpose. The supernatural element in The 
Ship Catharine is rare in Portuguese popular 
poetry. 

THE SHIP CATHAKINE. 

The Catharine was a gallant ship, 
On which a wonder did befall 



256 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

I '11 tell the story as it happ'd, 
If you will listen one and all. 

The ship had ploughed the long, salt seas, 
Until a year and day had gone. 

Their stores of food were eaten out, 
And beef and biscuit they had none. 

They tried to soak a shoe to eat, 

Its skin so hard they could not gnaw. 

For who should serve his mates for food, 
In turns the deadly lot they draw. 

The shortest straw the captain drew. 
I wot it caused him bitter pain : 
" Little sailor, climb the top-mast, 
And look for Portugal or Spain." 

" The coast of Portugal or Spain 
On either side I cannot see ; 
But seven swords drawn from their sheaths 
Shine bright and bare to slaughter thee." 

" Higher, higher, my little sailor, 

On the top-gallant take your stand, 
Try and see the coast of Portugal, 
Or of Spain the shining strand." 

" What reward, my gallant captain ! 
Both Spain and Portugal I see, 
I also see three lovely maidens 
Seated beneath an orange tree. 

" The eldest of them sews a seam, 
Another spins a shining thread, 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 257 

The fairest sits between the two, 
And hangs in tears her lovely head." 

" My darling daughters are all the three, 
I love them dearer than my life. 
For your reward, my little sailor, 
The loveliest shall be your wife." 

" I do not wish your darling daughter ; 

The cost of love would be my bane." 
" I '11 give you gold beyond your count." 

" It cost you too much strife to gain." 

" I '11 give to you my courier white, 

A nobler never felt the rein." 
" I do not want your courier white, 

It cost you too much toil to train." 

" I '11 give to you my gallant ship, 

Upon the seas to sail at will." 
" I do not want your gallant ship, 

To navigate I have no skill." 

" What reward then, little sailor, 

Do you demand that I should pay ? " 

" I want your soul, my gallant captain, 
Your soul with me to take away." 

" Demon, your claim I do deny. 
I will not yield my soul to thee. 
My soul belongs to God above, 
My body I '11 give to the sea." 

An angel caught him in her arms, 

And drew him from the boiling spray. 



258 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

The demon flew ; at eve the ship 
Was anchored safe within the bay. 

It is somewhat singular that with all the enter- 
prise of the Portuguese upon the sea during their 
period of national glory, their perilous and adven- 
turous navigations, and their many successful en- 
gagements in marine warfare, there should be so 
few ballads relating to the sea-faring exploits. 
There is one, however, Don Juan d' Armada, which 
seems to relate to some definite victory over the 
Turks, but the occasion and even the name of the 
hero are not recorded in authentic history. It has 
many features, however, which would indicate that 
it was the account of an actual event. 

DON JUAN D'ARMADA. 

His Majesty, God guard him, gave order for the fleet 
To sail at early daybreak the Turkish foe to meet. 
The admiral's ship at midnight fires the signal gun, 
And to the quay distracted the maids and matrons run. 
Sons and lovers they embrace ; they weep with bitter tears ; 
Their voices break with sorrow ; their hearts are swelled with 
fears. 

On board the busy vessels the noises grow more loud, 
The masters and the boatswains rush eager in the crowd, 
The captain of each frigate his silver whistle blows, 
And on the lofty yard-arms the sailors stand in rows. 
The white sails drop and belly out before the swelling breeze ; 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 259 

The white foam curls along the prow ; the brave fleet seeks 
the seas. 

Don Juan held his course before the favoring gale, 

At midday to the watchman he gave a roaring hail. 

" Get higher to the mast-head ! " he shouted strong and loud. 

The sailor quickly mounted the thin and shaking shroud. 

" Sail ho, sail ho," he shouted, " a mighty fleet 's ahead, 

Across the whole horizon the line of ships is spread." 

A Spanish renegade commanded that proud fleet 
Who by his beard had sworn Don Juan to defeat. 
Don Juan trusted Christ and made a solemn vow, 
The cross within his arms, and standing on the prow. 
Oh, Son of Virgin Mary, give us the heart to fight 
Those dogs of heathen pride, and scatter them in flight. 

The midday sun was bright, when the two fleets grappled 

close, 
And from the roaring cannon a blinding smoke arose, 
The bullets crashed in splinters and shattered plank and 

beam. 
To the sea the scuppers poured a hot and crimson stream. 
The bleeding corpses lay in heaps upon the reeking decks, 
With tattered sails and rudderless the ships were drifting 

wrecks. 

The Turkish captain's galley swung helpless on the sea. 
Of its three hundred sailors were left but forty-three, 
Along its shattered gunwales the masts and hamper drag, 
And weltering in the wake trails its dishonored flag. 
The Turkish fleet was beaten, and fled with sail and oar, 
Until it reached the harbor and anchored by the shore. 



260 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

Said the Sultan, " How came this ? Who struck this deadly 

blow ? " 
" 'T was Don Juan d' Armada, who brought our pennons low." 
" I do not mourn the galleys, for I can build me more, 
But I regret my sailors that never will see shore. 
For Don Juan d'Armada give him the honor due ; 
He is the king of captains, since he has conquered you." 

As in the Spanish romances, there are numerous 
allusions in the Portuguese ballads to the constant 
warfare waged with the Barbary corsairs, and the 
adventures of the unhappy captives who fell into 
their hands and were reduced to cruel servitude. 
A favorite theme with the ballad-writers was the 
rescue of the captive through the means of the 
Moorish damsel, who had fallen in love with him 
as she saw him laboring at his tasks. No doubt 
some such adventures actually happened, and at 
any rate the theme was one which appealed strongly 
to the imagination of the popular poets. This one 
ends with a touch of sentiment which might seem 
a modern addition, if the authenticity of the whole 
ballad was not vouched for by so careful a collector 
as Braga. 

THE CAPTIVE. 

I sailed from Hamburg port one morn 

Upon a bonny caravel. 
'T was neither war nor peace at sea, 

When pirate Moors upon us fell. 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 261 

They took me as a slave to sell, 

Unto their country of Salee, 
But neither Moor nor Mussulman 

Would give a silver groat for me. 

'T was only a false Jewish dog, 

Who wished to have me for his slave, 

He made my life a bitter pain, 
And beat me like a scurvy knave. 

All day I wove esparto grass, 

At night I turned the hard corn mill, 

A wooden gag between my jaws 
Lest of the meal I 'd steal my fill. 

But fortune brought me a kind dame, 

Who pitied the sad life I led, 
She sent me from her table rich 

Fresh meat and wine and good white bread. 

She gave me all things that I asked, 
And something I asked not, as well, 

Within Jewessa's arms I wept, 
But not for her the salt tears fell. 

" Christian, you need not weep," she said, 

" I know your grief ere it is told." 
" But how can I my home regain 

Without a single piece of gold ? " 

" If 't is to buy a horse you need, 
I '11 give to you my pretty mare, 
You need not wait to find a ship, 

But take the shallop anchored there." 



262 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

" Fair dame, 't is not a horse will serve, 
For far is Ceuta and Castille, 
To take a ship and run away, 

Would be your father's slave to steal." 

" Oh, take this purse of yellow silk, 
My mother dying gave to me, 
The golden pieces it contains 
Will richly pay your ransom fee. 

" And when at home returned again, 
To Christian maidens you can say 
How Jewish hearts can sacrifice 

And show a deeper love than they." 

As thus she spoke, the master came. 
, " Oh, master," said I, " God be praised, 
Good news has come across the sea, 

My friends the ransom price have raised." 

" Ah, Christian, what is that you say, 
Many cruzadoes it will need. 
Who gives you enough of gold 

To pay the heavy ransom's meed ? " 

" My sisters twain have sent me part, 
The other I had kept in store. 
An angel has brought me the gold, 
An angel bright from heaven's door." 

" Hearken, Christian, change your faith, 
And you shall wed my daughter dear, 
My goods and wealth shall all be thine, 
And joy and peace surround you here." 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 263 

" I will not be a cursed Jew, 

Nor heathen Turk of grace denied, 
Nor will I change for all your wealth 
The faith of Jesus crucified." 

" Why are you pale, Rachael, my girl, 
Beloved child, tell me the truth ; 
Have you been brought to shameful harm 
By this accursed Christian youth ? " 

" Oh, let the Christian youth go free, 
For his amend I have no claim, 
If my flower of love he 's had, 

I gave it, and he 's not to blame." 

He shut her in a dungeon tower, 

Which he with heavy stone blocks made, 

That the base Moors might never know 
That shame had touched a Jewish maid. 

Oh, mandolin, my mandolin, 

Rest silent hung upon the wall, 
My longing love across the sea 

Is borne away beyond recall. 



The Faithful Paladin has a more tragical ending 
for the captive. The ballad had its origin in the 
province of Algarve, but there are several variants 
in Portuguese as well as similar ballads in Spanish. 
Calderon has made the theme the subject of a 
drama under the title of The Constant Prince, re- 
lating to the captivity and sufferings of Don Per- 



264 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

nando, heir to the throne of Portugal, who was 
captured by the Moors in 1438. 

THE FAITHFUL PALADIN. 

Adventured in a Moorish land, 

A paladin, heartstrong and brave, 
Fell into Miramolin's hands, 

To serve him as a captive slave. 

The Moorish king a daughter had, 

More white and fair than jasmine flower. 

Her eyes with sparkling light were glad, 
And youth and bloom her beauty's dower. 

To Safim as she looked one day 

Celima saw the captive knight, 
With pensive gaze turned far away, 

And sadness in his empty sight. 

The touch she felt within her heart 

She sought with shamefaced care to hide, 

None guessed the wound that gave the smart, 
Or heard her weeping when she cried. 

Since then her pastimes had no zest, 

Nor could she even peace regain, 
The longing love that filled her breast 

Grew every day a deeper pain. 

Upon the terrace hours and hours 
She sat and watched the slave below 

Dig at his task among the flowers, 
In summer sunshine's burning glow. 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 265 

At last her longing broke her pride, 

She told her passion on her knees. 
He silent stood, and only sighed 

For her he loved beyond the seas. 

Faithful and true to his fond love, 
It fenced his heart with triple shield, 

Not all Celima's charms could move 
A more than pitying grace to yield. 

" My gold and jewels shall be thine, 
If only you but wish it so, 
And with your freedom give me mine ; 
Tell me, Christian, yes or no." 

" I wish no jewels from your hand, 
Or aught that may belong to thee, 
Some one will come from my far land, 
And for my ransom pay the fee." 

" Then let me be your humble slave 
To serve you wheresoe'er you go. 
No better fortune can I crave, 
Tell me, Christian, yes or no." 

" My humble slave you must not be, 
A better fortune is your due ; 
How came your love to fix on me, 
Who have no heart to give to you ? " 

" My God and father I '11 forswear, 
And only yours will seek to know ; 
Every curse of heaven I '11 dare, 
Tell me, Christian, yes or no." 



266 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

" Your love and riches tempt me not. 
Both love and riches wait for me. 
Accursed be the fatal lot 

That brought me o'er the sad, salt sea. 

" I spurn a soul that turns to God, 
A heart for me that suffers pain. 
Be happy in the paths you 've trod, 
And love a youth who loves again." 

When these sad words the captive said, 
With sudden wrath she turned away. 

In seven days the knight was dead. 
Was it her deed ? No one can say. 



The epoch of the Crusades is beyond the limit 
of the popular ballads which have been preserved, 
although it is probable that they may have had 
their foundation in originals of that date. The 
story of the return of the spouse from the Holy 
Land, and his making himself known after various 
trials of his wife's fidelity, is a common one in the 
ballads of all European nations, and is of a char- 
acter to appeal to the dramatic instincts of the 
popular poets. Close resemblances to the ballad 
of The Fair Princess can be found in German, 
French, and Spanish popular poetry, and the theme 
itself of course dates back to the return of Ulysses, 
and to the ballads which were the origin of the 
Odyssey. 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 267 

THE FAIR PRINCESS. 

The princess sat in her garden fair ; 
With a golden comb she combed her hair. 
She raised her eyes to the azure bay. 
A brave fleet bore in with pennons gay. 

" Good captain, say, in the Holy Land 
Have you seen my spouse with his brave band ? " 

" In Holy Land is many a knight. 
With what point device was he bedight ? " 

" His steed bore saddle of silver gilt 
The cross of Christ was his gold sword hilt." 

" A knight with these I saw bravely fall 
In fierce assault on a city's wall." 

" A wretched widow I have become 
To mourn and weep in a ruined home, 
I have three daughters, lovely and sage, 
But spouseless and weak in orphanage." 

" What gift to him who returns your spouse ? " 
" All the gold and silver in the house." 
" Of gold and silver I have no need, 
Some other guerdon must be my meed." 

" I have three great mills ; all shall be thine. 
They grind white wheat and benzoin fine, 
The delicate flour, so finely wrought, 
The royal stewards have always sought." 

" For your three mills I have no desire, 
Some other reward must pay my hire." 



268 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

" My roof tile of gold and ivory." 

" Your gold and iv'ry tiles are not for me." 

" My daughters fair, you shall have them all ; 
Two to serve you in your banquet hall ; 
The third and fairest shall be your bride, 
In love's nest to slumber by your side." 

" Princess, your fair daughters count for nought, 

A costlier gift is in my thought." 
" I have nothing more to offer thee ; 

No other gift can you ask of me." 

" But I only ask, and you can spare 

The simple gift of your body fair." 
" A fouler insult knight ne'er gave. 

Haste, vassals, and scourge this loathly knave." 

" The wedding ring with diamonds bright, 
We broke in twain on our bridal night. 
Where is the half you have kept so dear ? 
The other half you can see it here." 

" How many tears you have made me shed ! 
How slow the lingering years have fled ! 
What pains and griefs lie in your debt ! 
When bliss like this cannot forget." 

The ballad of Dom Duardos and Flerida has an 
antique flavor in its simplicity and indefiniteness, 
as in its element of imaginative poetry, which 
would lead to a belief in its ancient origin, dating 
beyond the acquirement of more accomplished art 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 269 

in the popular poets. A similar ballad is to be 
found in the Castilian. 



DOM DUARDOS AND FLERIDA. 

'T was in the month of April, 

The day before May clay, 
When roses red, and lilies white, 

Are blooming bright and gay. 

The night was calm and cloudless, 
With golden stars arrayed, 

The Infanta, fair Flerida, 
In her wide garden strayed. 

" God guard you, tender flowers, 
Great joy you 've given me ; 
I go to a strange land ; 
Such is my fate's decree. 

" If my father seeks me, 
He who loves me well ; 
Tell him that love has drawn me 
Within its fatal spell. 

" Tell him that fateful love 
Has seized me in its hold ; 
I know not where I go, 
And none to me has told." 

Then Dom Duardos spoke : 
" Oh, weep not so, my dear, 

In the great realm of England 
Are fairer things than here. 



270 ANCIENT POBTUGUESE BALLADS. 

" There are more limpid streams, 
And gardens yet more fair. 
A thousand flowers blooming, 
And scenting all the air. 



And all of noble strain, 
And palaces of silver, 

Where you shall nobly reign. 

" With emeralds of green, 
And finest Turkish gold, 
Upon the shining walls 
The story shall be told 

" How, to do you honor, 
I fought Primaleon. 
I did not fear his strength, 

When your bright glances shone." 

When fair Flerida heard, 
She wiped her tears away. 

And hand in hand they went 
To where his galleys lay. 

The fifty galleys brave 
Moved out upon the deep, 

And to their chiming oars 
Flerida fell asleep, 

In Dom Duardos' arms, 

Whose heart with joy did leap. 

Know all men that are born, 
How sure is fate's decree, 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 271 

From neither love nor death 
Can mortal man be free. 

Ballads on the subject of the slaying a would- 
be ravisher with his own arms are common in 
popular poetry, and striking examples are found 
in Scotch, French, and Spanish. There are sev- 
eral variants in Portuguese of The Pilgrim Maid, 
but the best is that furnished by Almeida Gar- 
rett. 

THE PILGRIM MAID. 

Adown the lofty mountain green 

The pilgrim maid descends : 
No fairer and no purer maid 

To sacred station wends. 

Her long robe catches in the thorns, 

That strew the grassy mat, 
Her lovely eyes are downward cast, 

And hidden by her hat. 

A knight pursues her footsteps fast, 

With evil in his eyes, 
But he can hardly reach her side, 

Though his best speed he tries. 

At last he 's caught her, as she stops 

Beside the olive tree, 
That at the holy hermit's door 

Stands fair and tall to see. 



272 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

She leans against the sacred wood, — 

" By God and Saint Marie, 
This holy place should be my guard, 

Oh, do no wrong to me." 

The false knight was too base of heart 

To feel God's sacred grace. 
He throws his arms around her form 

In strong and fierce embrace. 

In mad and furious wrestle, 

Their struggling arms are wound ; 

The maiden's strength is crushed by his : 
She 's cast upon the ground. 

But as she falls she pulls the dirk, 

That in his belt she spies ; 
She strikes it deep to his false heart, 

And out the black blood flies. 

" Oh, pilgrim maid, I beg and pray 
By God and Saint Marie, 
Tell not of my dishonored death, 
Or how you 've punished me." 

" I '11 tell the tale in your own land, 
And in mine vaunt it too, 
How such a villain, false and base, 
With his own blade I slew." 

She pulls the cord that swings the bell ; 
It makes a solemn din. 
" Oh, hermit, pray that God may save 
This soul that dies in sin, 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 273 

And grant a grave in holy ground 
His body to lie in." 

The Portuguese ballads, which relate to domes- 
tic tragedies, without reference to historic events, 
are numerous, and very frequently of a high order 
of merit. They have the characteristics of folk- 
poetry in their dramatic interjections and irregu- 
larities, but often have a consistency and strength 
not found in the more romantic ballads. The 
Death-Bed Marriage is a specimen of this class. 

THE DEATH-BED MAKRIAGE. 

From the frontier of Castille the bitter news has flown, 
The brave Dom Juan is dying ; how his dear love will moan ; 
Three doctors grave were summoned, the most renowned for 

skill, 
If they to life restore him gold will their purses fill. 

The youngest two declared that the malady was slight ; 
But when the elder entered he saw with clearer light. 
To the dying man he said, " You 've but three hours to live, 
To solemn thoughts and duties that short time you should 
give. 

" One will serve to make your will, and purge your burdened 

soul, 
One is for the sacrament, the church's sacred dole ; 
The third and last shall serve you, while tolls the passing bell 
To see your best beloved, and say a last farewell." 

While these sad words gave warning, fair Isabel stood by. 
He turned to look upon her, with death mist in his eye. 



274 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

"You have doue well, my treasure, my death to look upon ; 
I '11 pray the Virgin Mary to heal the wrong I 've done." 

While thus he spoke in anguish, there came his mother dear, 
" My darling son, what ails you, why is your soul in fear ? " 
" Oh, mother, I am dying ; I have not long to last ; 
Three hours to live they gave me, and one 's already past." 

" Son of my womb, consider, with death's hand on you laid, 
Have you no debt of honor to pay some noble maid ? " 
" Yes, mother, to my anguish I owe such debt of shame ; 
That God may not in judgment condemn my soul to flame ! " 

" It is to Dona Isabel I owe that shameful debt ; 
But a thousand cruzadoes a spouse for her will get." 
" No gold nor silver money will pay for honor lost ; 
Thy cruzadoes are worthless as leaves the wind has tost." 

" I '11 leave her to the doctors that they no skill may spare, 
And you, my darling mother, will have her in your care, 
A city for her dowry the day that she shall wed — 
If any man refuse her, the axe shall have his head." 

"The honor of a maid is not paid or bought with land, 
Wed her, well-beloved, with your cold and dying hand, 
That she may be your widow, and bear an honored name, 
And though she weeps with sorrow it will not be for shame." 

The ballad of Dom Aleixio, of which there are 
several versions, has a lightness of touch in the 
description of the masquerading maid, which is 
not often found in the popular ballads, although 
the conclusion is sufficiently tragic. 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 275 

DOM ALEIXIO. 

We are three sisters, young and gay, 
Our cheeks and eyes the likeness show ; 

In broidering we spend the day, 
Or teach each other how to sew. 

The youngest, in her youth elate, 

The fancy took, one summer night, 
To pass the orange garden gate, 

With two flambeaux to give her light. 

She wore a pretty page's suit, 

That showed her shape so trim and neat ; 
In light, fair hands she held a lute, 

And colored shoes adorned her feet. 

She strutted up and down the road, 

With mimic of a martial stride. 

" Fair maidens here have their abode ; 

Which of the three shall be my bride ? " 

Upon the balcony we leant, 

And laughed to see her gallant guise ; 

At length the torches' flame was spent ; 
The moon had risen in the skies. 

As to the gate her way she took 

When all her sportive tricks were done, 

She saw with sudden startled look 
A hermit on a bench of stone. 

" Father, what do you here ? " she cries. 
He answered not, but stood upright ; 



276 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

So tall his stature seemed to rise, 

The stoutest heart would feel affright. 

" If you 're a demon, as you seem, 
This sacred cross bids you avaunt. 
If your lost soul you would redeem, 
The holy priest shall masses chant." 

" I 'm not an imp from hell's domain ; 
The holy cross I do not fear ; 
I 'm not a soul that waits in pain, 
For a redeeming mass to hear. 

" But Dom Aleixio's ghost am I 

To save you from a deadly strife ; 
There seven men in ambush lie, 

With naked swords to take your life." 

" Indeed ! then by the living God, 
And by the Virgin Mary's grace, 
Were they twice seven, on the sod 
I would not yield a foot of space. 

" Come on, come on, you sneaking band, 
And show your valiance in the light ; 
With good sword in each valiant hand, 
See, mine is ready for the fight. 

" If weaponless is one of you, 

To him my own sword I will lend ; 
With this good dagger, keen and true, 
I can right well my life defend." 

As thus she spoke these words of pride, 
The hermit off his robe did throw ; 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 277 

She snatched the dagger from his side, 
And pierced his heart with deadly blow. 

" Oh, who has slain my lover true, 

That lies before me on the ground ? " 

" 'T was you, my lady, only you 

Had fateful power to give the wound." 

Rise up, Maria, from your knees, 

In vain in prayer your hands are crost, 

The sobbing of the orange trees 
Bewails your soul, forever lost. 

The ballad of Dom Pedro Menino was found by 
Signor Braga in the Azores islands, and is by him 
attributed to an actual historical event, the mar- 
riage of Dom Pedro Nino, a simple knight, to the 
infanta Beatrixe of Portugal; but, notwithstand- 
ing the similarity of names, it must be considered 
as at least doubtful. 



DOM PEDRO MENINO. 

The marquis had three gallant sons, 

Each one was handsome, brave and tall ; 

The king commanded them to come, 
And serve as pages in his hall. 

The first put on the royal robe ; 

The next the ribboned shoe-strings tied ; 
The third and youngest of the three 

His prentice hand as barber tried. 



278 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

The princess saw his blooming face, 
And smiled on him with loving eye ; 

The King was told the shameful thing, 
And swore the daring page should die 

He cast him in a dungeon cell, 
Within a tower great and strong. 

While waiting there the fatal day, 
A huntsman chanced to pass along. 

He saw Dom Pedro, as he passed. 

" Cousin, what do you there ? " said he. 
The prisoner answered through the grate, 

" I 'in destined for the gallows tree. 

" To-morrow morn I 'm doomed to die, 
And to the ravens shall be fed, 
All for a simple word of love 
That to the princess I had said." 

The huntsman to the marquise goes, 
" I bring you news of woe and scorn, 

Dom Pedro is condemned to die, 

As sure as comes to-morrow's morn." 

The marquise mounted a fleet steed, 
And all her servants followed on, 

Their mantles hung upon their arms, 
They had not time their cloaks to don. 

" What do you in a prison cell ? " 

" I 'm doomed to the black gallows tree, 
Because I kissed with love words light 
The royal maid, who smiled on me." 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 279 

" Come, take your sweet-voiced mandolin, 
And sing in tune the while you play 
The gentle song your father made 
In honor of St. John's fair day." 

Is such a woman from God's hand ? 

Her heart is harder than a stone. 
Her son must die at morning's light ; 

She bids him sing in joyous tone. 

" O, what a lovely day, 

The bright day of St. John 
When youths and maidens sweet 

Their shining garments don ; 
They smile as hand in hand, 

They move with dancing feet, 
Some bearing blushing roses, 

And some the basil sweet. 
How sad it is for me 

In prison cell to lie, 
And never see the sun 

That sparkles in the sky." 

The King, who rode his courser white, 
That he might view the royal chase, 

Reined in his steed and loitered there 
With silent wonder in his face. 

" What voice divine is that I hear, 
That fills the air with melody ? 
Is it the angels in the sky, 
Or magic sirens in the sea ? " 



280 ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 

" It is no angel in the sky, 

Nor magic siren in the sea, 
It is Dom Pedro in the tower, 

Condemned to die for love of me. 
I 'd wish to have him for my spouse, 

If that the King would set him free." 

ft Bid the jailer hasten there ; 

Take off his chains and let him go. 
Take him, daughter, for your spouse, 
Since God himself has wished it so." 

The ballad of Count Nillo may perhaps be attrib- 
uted to the same real or imaginary origin as the 
preceding on account of some similarity in the 
name and the language, although the denouement 
is different. The trees which spring from the 
tombs of the unfortunate lovers and unite their 
branches is one of the most familiar images in 
folk-poetry, and hardly any collection of national 
ballads is without an example. 

COUNT NILLO. 

Count Nillo in the river halts to bathe his weary steed ; 
While the thirsty stallion drinks the Count sings loud and 
high ; 
The evening shade had darkened down ; the King's sight 
was not clear : 
The Infanta asked her heart if she would laugh or cry. 



ANCIENT PORTUGUESE BALLADS. 281 

" Keep silent, daughter ! hearken ! What sweet song do you 
hear ? 

Is it a heavenly angel, or siren of the sea ? " 
" It is no heavenly angel's song, or siren's magic voice, 

But Mllo, the Count Mllo, who conies to marry me." 

" Who speaks of the Count Mllo, who dares to breathe his 
name ? 

That traitor who defied me, and whom I have exiled." 
" The fault is mine alone ; I could not live without him, 

Oh, pardon the Count Mllo, pardon your only child ! " 

" Silence, dishonored daughter, let me not see your shame, 
Before the morning lightens, the Count shall lose his head." 

"Let the headsman be prepared to take my life likewise, 
And the sexton dig a grave wide for a double bed." 

The mournful bells are ringing ; for whose death do they 
knell? 

Count Mllo has been slain ; the Infanta's soul has flown ; 
The body of Count Mllo was buried in the porch, 

The Infanta laid to rest before the altar throne. 

A cypress and an orange sprang from these lovers' graves, 
They grew and leaned together, and with their branches 
kissed. 

The King in savage anger bade axemen cut them down, 
But from their severed trunks arose a heavenly mist. 

From his cloud came a pigeon, from her cloud a ringdove, 
They flew before the King at his table as he ate. 

" Accursed be the loves that thus mock me to my face, 
And neither life nor death has power to separate." 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

There is a Hungarian proverb which says, " The 
Magyar amuses himself by weeping." There is an 
underlying element of melancholy in this proud and 
high-spirited race, and its susceptibility to sadness 
is manifest in its folk-poetry as in its remarkable 
and powerful national music, which has for the fine 
ear a note of lamentation beneath its fiery tone. 
This is not singular, for the folk-songs of almost 
every nation have this pervading element to a 
greater or less degree, characterized by shades of 
temperament and national and historical influences, 
and showing that the minds of primitive peoples 
were most deeply affected by the woes of life 
rather than its joys, and the disappointments 
rather than the successes of passion, which express 
themselves in poetry. The aspects of nature, par- 
ticularly the loneliness of vast plains such as exist 
in Hungary, and the enforced pensiveness of the 
shepherd life, exercise a powerful influence in giv- 
ing a melancholy tinge to popular poetry, and in 
its melody and in its thought it breathes the note 
of the rain-laden breeze that sighs across the vast 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 283 

expanse, and the lights of whose magic sunshine 
are rather of sadness than exhilaration. Like all 
primitive poetry, born in times of strife and a dis- 
organized and turbulent condition of society, the 
Magyar ballads deal with violent passions and 
bloodshed, and the brigands, who were rather mili- 
tary outlaws than common robbers, are the popular 
heroes, and appeal to the peasant imagination as 
the embodiments of the revolt of the people against 
the tyranny of the rich and powerful. But, in 
spite of their exploits, the gallows always waits for 
them, and the ballads end with the dismal specta- 
cle of the body swinging in the wind on the deadly 
tree, while in the midst of their carousings the note 
of sadness and the foreboding of certain fate con- 
stantly intrudes. The Magyar brigand ballads 
have a much deeper element of poetry and passion 
than is to be found in the coarse humor and vul- 
gar trickery of the English Robin Hood ballads, 
and express a finer and more delicate fibre of na- 
tional feeling. The prevalent characteristics of 
Magyar folk-poetry are, however, the same as 
those of the higher standard of popular ballads, 
and were produced by similar influences, and in 
similar condition of mind. There is the same 
vigor of expression and strength of natural im- 
agery, the same abruptness and disconnection in 
the construction in which dramatic dialogue is 



284 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

interjected into description with a perfect faith in 
the hearer's comprehension, the same naivete* and 
freshness of language, and the same simplicity and 
passion of thought. Those striking coincidences 
in subject and form of expression which are noted, 
to the wonder and bewilderment of the students 
of folk-poetry and folk-tales, in the most widely 
diverse nations, and which would almost lead to 
the belief in a common origin and derivation, or to 
some means of intercommunication yet unknown, 
are to be found in the Magyar ballads, connecting 
them with the common stock. In the specimens 
which follow, the ballad of Poisoned Janos is 
almost exactly similar in construction and refrain 
to the Scotch ballad of Lord Randal : — 

" O, where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son, 

O, where hae ye been, my handsome young man ? " 

" I hae been to the wild-wood ; mother, make my bed soon, 
For I 'in wearie wi hunting, and fain wald lie down ! " — 

with the substitution of the " crab with four feet " 
for the "eels boiled in broo" — the conventional 
poisoned dish. The same ballad in substance and 
form of expression, with the same devising of prop- 
erty to friends and the same bestowal of a curse 
upon the murderess, is to be found in Danish, 
German, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, and 
other European folk-poetry, and may yet be dis- 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 285 

covered in Africa and the South Seas. The cir- 
cumstance of the infant speaking from the cradle, 
giving warning of the faithlessness of his mother 
in Barcsai is common in the folk-ballads of many- 
nations, and the incident of a bird's singing ill- 
news, the request of a dead man for a peculiar 
kind of coffin and a favorite burial place, and the 
growing together of flowers from the graves of a 
loving couple, are almost universal features in 
popular poetry ; and the rejection of the body of a 
murdered man by a stream is also familiar. The 
griefs and sorrows over mortality, the laments of 
disappointed love, the woes of lonely old age, the 
remorse for sin, and the fierce passions of jealousy 
and revenge are common to human nature, and are 
interpreted in the same language the world over, 
whether in civilization or barbarism. 

In regard to the versions which follow, it is 
needless to state the difficulty of transferring the 
original vividness of expression, or preserving the 
effect of the repetitions and other peculiarities of 
primitive poetry in the conventional fetters of 
modern verse and rhyme. The first ballad, Barc- 
sai, is given in a literal translation in order that 
these forms and turns of expression may be appre- 
ciated. The others have been rendered as literally 
and with as much of the original flavor as possible, 
but with a consciousness that much of the latter 



286 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

has inevitably evaporated. As says M. Jean de 
Nathy, to whose literal translations into French, 
Ballades et Chansons Populaires de la Hongrie, I 
am indebted for my knowledge of Magyar folk- 
poetry : " For the greater part without rhymes, 
they abound in repetition of words and parts of 
phrases, in alliterations and parallelism, called 
by the poet Arany ' rhymes of thought,' which are 
difficult to render in modern forms of verse." 

BARCSAI. 

" Go, my master, go to Kolozvar, 
To Kolozvar, to the mansion of my father, 
And bring me, bring me the great piece of linen, 
The great piece of linen, of linen fine that I have had as a 
present." 

" Do not go, my father, do not go, do not quit your mansion, 
For my lady mother, in truth, loves Barcsai." 

" Hearest thou, wife, nearest thou what says the infant ? " 
" Do not believe him, my dear master, the infant is drunken." 

He is gone upon the words of his wife, 

Upon the words of his wife toward Kolozvar. 

Before he had traveled half of the road, 

There came to his spirit the words of the little infant, 

And immediately he returns toward the mansion, 

Toward the mansion. Before his door he halts. 

" Open the door, open the door, my lady wife." 
" In a moment I will open it, in a moment, my dear, beloved 
master, 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 287 

But first let me put on my every-day garment, 
But first let me put on my apron." 

" Open the door, open the door, my lady wife." 

" In a moment I will open it, my dear beloved master, 

But first let me put on my shoes new-soled, 

But first let me knot around my head my every-day kerchief." 

" Open the door, open the door, my lady wife." 
She did not know what to say ; to open the door she was 
forced. 

" Give me, give me, the key to the great chest." 

" I cannot give you it, I cannot give you the key of the great 

chest, 
In the neighborhood I have been ; I jumped over the hedge, 
And it 's there I lost the key of the great chest — 
We will find it at the fair blush of morning, 
At the fair blush of morning, at the brightening of the earth." 

Then he struck so strongly the great painted chest 

That he broke it in two halves. 

Barcsai fell out and rolled upon the earth. 

He took his sword and cut off his head. 

" Hearken, my wife, hearken, my wife, hearken, 

Of three deaths, which do you choose ? 

Do you choose that I cut off your head ? 

Or with your silky locks that I sweep the house ? 

Or do you choose to watch until the morning, 
And serve as a torch to seven wassailers ? " 
" Of the three deaths I choose 
To serve as a torch to seven wassailers." 



288 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

" My servant, my servant, my very little servant, 

Bring me, bring the great pot of pitch. 

Bring me, bring me, the great piece of linen, 

The great piece of linen, of linen fine, received as a present. 

Begin at her head, and to the sole of her feet wrap her, 

The fine linen knot around her head. 

Begin at her head, and to the sole of her feet cover her with 

pitch. 
Begin at the sole of her feet and set the whole on fire. 

" At her head I will place the Wallach fifer, 
At her feet I will place the gypsy fiddler. 
Whistle, Wallach, whistle from thy Wallach pipe, 

Pla y> OT s y> P la y from th y gypsy fiddle, 

Whistle with all thy might, play with all thy soul, 
That the heart of my wife may be rejoiced." 

KURIS PISTA. 

" Go, my child, where the maidens spin 

Within their chamber fair." 
" Ah, mother, I dare not venture in, 

For Kuris will be there." 

" If he be there, you need not fear, 
The young men will thee guard." 
The judge's daughter, with glances clear, 
Sits in the young men's ward. 

Kuris Pista, indeed, was there, 

And to the girl drew nigh, 
His words he spoke with gracious air, 
" The gay dance let us try." 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 289 

" Oh, let me go, or I shall fall, 
And in this place will die." 
But Kuris heeded not her call, 
And fire lit in his eye. 

" Play, gypsy, play more loud and fast, 
Play till your tight strings break. 
Though feet may fail, the dance shall last 
For the mad music's sake." 

" Oh, let me go ! Oh, let me go ! 
My treasure, let me loose, 
The red blood from my heart does flow, 
And fills my soaking shoes." 

" I will not loose you till you die, 
My treasure and my dove. 
Not once but twelve times o'er have I 
Been spurned in asking love." 



" Oh, mother, open wide the gate, 
Of your leaved garden thick, 
The young men with a litter wait, 
Bearing thy daughter sick. 

" Oh, mother, open wide the gate, 
Of your rose garden red, 
The young men with a litter wait, 
Bearing thy daughter dead." 

Oh, sorrow has her father dear, 

The mother a heartbreak. 
They did not heed their daughter's fear 

Her lover's rage to wake. 



290 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

" Since you would not be mine, 

No other shall you wed. 
My blood shall flow with thine, 

One mingled streamlet red. 
Our bodies side by side 

In one tomb close shall lie, 
To God, the glorified 

Our souls together fly." 



THE MURDERED YOUTH. 

They have killed the gallant youth, 
For his sixty florins white, 

In the Tizta they have thrown him, 
For his stallion bay and bright. 

The Tizta would not keep him 
In its waves nor let him float, 

On the strand a fisher found him 
And took him into his boat. 

His mother came to wake him, 
But her voice he could not hear, 

Rise up, rise up, my gallant son, 
Your mother's heart is here." 

His father came to wake him, 
But his voice he could not hear, 

Rise up, rise up, my gallant son, 
Your father's house is near." 

His sweetheart came to wake him, 
But her voice he could not hear, 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 291 

" Rise up, rise up, my rosemary, 

Clasp my neck with arms so dear." 

" Oh, tell me, will you make me 

A coffin of walnut bright ? " 
" My darling, I will make you 

A coffin of marble white." 

" Oh, tell me, will you robe me 

In a shroud of lawn's fine stitch ? " 

" My darling, I will robe you 
In a shroud of velvet rich." 

" Oh, tell me, if my coffin new 

You '11 trim with nails of brass ? " 

" My darling, on your coffin new 

Gold nails shall be thick as grass." 

" Oh, tell me, will you lay me 

In the graveyard's grassy glade ? " 

" My darling, I will lay you 

In my own rose garden's shade." 

" Oh, tell me, will you mourn me, 

With three maids to see your tears ? " 

" My darling, I will mourn you 
Until all the wide world hears." 



THE THREE BRIGANDS. 

Always ranging night and day, 
The three brigands bold 

Are seeking their prey, 
In the forest old. 



292 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

In the forest old they meet a Greek, 
And the Greek they slay, 

From his full wagon 
Bear booty away. 

Always ranging on the way, 

The three brigands bold 
Reach a roadside tavern's 

Sheltering fold. 
One cries aloud, " Ho, landlady gay, 

Bring in your good wine." 
" My daughter shall serve, 

And I too am fine." 

They eat and drink, 

The three brigands bold, 
But the youngest thief 

Sits pallid and cold, 
To himself he says, " My cradle should 

A coffin have made. 
My infant linen 

For a shroud been laid, 
And my swaddling cord 

My body swayed." 



THE BELLS OF TARJA. 

From bells of Tarja the sad notes flow : 
Faded the sweetheart of the brave youth. 

Three doves are ringing the bells of woe, 
To mourn their sister in love and truth. 

With lily flowers they painted her shroud, 
And that is why 'tis so pure and white. 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 293 

Her love bends o'er it, and weeps aloud ; 
His heart's black tears its radiance blight. 

They planted rosemary on her grave ; 

Weeping he followed his sweetheart's hearse. 
His tears were dew where grave grasses wave : 

" Return my love or have my curse ! " 

Her linen chemise none will wash now, 

Except the rain of his weeping eyes ; 
The tangled curls on her pallid brow 

No one will caress with soothing sighs. 

Again at Tarja the bells ring slow — 

For the youth himself they sadly toll. 
He wept so much for his dove laid low, 

To-day they weep his own parting soul. 

Young maids, young maids of Tarja's plum grove, 
By constant presence pay love's debts. 

For a young man's heart breaks for his dove, 
While a young girl's heart weeps and forgets. 



THE BETROTHED. 

" In the great court of thy small dwelling, 
My dear rose, what doest thou ? " 

" I cook my pullets ; my heart I 'm telling 

My love for his supper will come but now." 

" In the great court of thy small dwelling, 
My dear rose, what doest thou ? " 

" I trim my dress ; my heart I 'm telling 

My love will be coming with shining brow." 



294 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

" In the great court of thy small dwelling, 
My dear rose, what doest thou ? " 

" I gather flowers ; my heart I 'm telling 
My garlanded hair will attest my vow." 

" Cook not your fowls, nor trim your dresses, 
Put no flowers in your hair. 
My dear rose pale, for your raven tresses 
A branch of willow you may find and wear." 

The fatal fight is done and over, 
Three came back to tell the tale. 

On the bloody field there lies thy lover, 
And his winding sheet is his broken mail. 

" Oh, cruel bird, I '11 curse your singing, 
Fatal voice that tears my breast. 
My mother the shroud will soon be bringing, 
And in white grave clothes I '11 be drest." 



POISONED JANOS. 

" Whence comest thou with knitted brows, 
My heart, my soul, my little son ? " 
" I come from my love's sister's house, 
Dear lady mother. 
Oh, my heart aches so, 
Make ready my bed." 

" What has she given you to eat, 

My heart, my soul, my little son ? " 
" She gave me a crab with four feet, 1 

1 The crab with four feet is the conventional poisonous food in 
Hungarian folk-lore, as the toad is in English and the spotted 
frog in French. 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 295 

Dear lady mother. 
Oh, my heart aches so, 
Make ready my bed." 

" How served she it for you to dine, 

My heart, my soul, my little son ? " 
" She served it in a salver fine, • 
Dear lady mother. 
Oh, my heart aches so, 
Make ready my bed." 

" Is it that makes you look so white, 

My heart, my soul, my little son ? " 
" Yes, that will kill me ere the night, 
Dear lady mother. 
Oh, my heart aches so, 
Make ready my bed." 

" What will you leave your father gray, 

My heart, my soul, my little son ? " 
" My brass-trimmed wagon, new and gay, 
Dear lady mother. 
Oh, my heart aches so, 
Make ready my bed." 

" What will you leave your brother brave, 
My heart, my soul, my little son ? " 
" My four strong oxen he can have, 
Dear lady mother. 
Oh, my heart aches so, 
Make ready my bed." 

" What will you leave your brother fair, 

My heart, my soul, my little son ? " 
" My four swift horses for his share, 



296 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

Dear lady mother. 
Oh, my heart aches so, 
Make ready my bed." 

" What will you leave your sister bright, 

My heart, my soul, my little son ? " 
" My household vessels silver white, 
Dear lady mother. 
Oh, my heart aches so, 
Make ready my bed." 

" What will you leave your love's false kin, 

My heart, my soul, my little son ? " 
" The fire of hell her heart within, 
Dear lady mother. 
Oh, my heart aches so, 
Make ready my bed." 

" WTiat will you leave your mother dear, 

My heart, my soul, my little son ? " 

" The grief and pain you '11 have to bear, 

Dear lady mother. 

Oh, my heart aches so, 

Make ready my bed." 

GYURI BANDI. 

The rain falls in a few small drops, 
Gyuri Bandi beside the gallows cries, 

Beyond Szeged the woodman chops 

The tree, from which the croaking raven flies. 

Yet Gyuri Bandi naught has done 
But twist his kerchief to a solid cord, 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 297 

And knot it round his wife's neck bone, 
To deck a tree for her sovereign lord. 

His shirt and kilt he 'd bade her lave, 

That he might ride to his captain's abode. — 

Then he bridled his steed so brave, 
And away to his rose's bower he rode. 

" Ah, mother dear, I have sinned a sin, 

I 've killed my wife with my love to go." — 
Then Gyuri Bandi drank at the inn, 
And slept in the cloak of Kasa his foe. 

Gyuri Bandi was bound with chains, 

From the judge's mouth his doom was told, 

The gallows tree in winds and rains 
Dandles and rocks him, alone and cold. 

Gyuri Bandi had never thought 

The wind would rock him on the gallows tree, 
Even Kasa hi m self, whose blood he 'd sought, 

Was dismal at heart the sad sight to see. 

THE MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 

" Soft shines the light of the evening star, 
Beneath my window my love stands tall. 
Dear mother, let me undo the bar, 

My heart beats fast to come at his call." 

" My darling rose, to the window glide, 
Your honey lips let me deeply kiss, 
A thousand sorrows in my heart abide, 
With but a touch they '11 bloom in bliss." 



298 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

" Mother, do you hear his magic call ? 
I have tied a bunch of roses red, 
In his hat to shine above them all, 

As pride of his kiss would lift my head." 

" My daughter, you are too young for love, 
Too soon it is for the matron's cap, 
For a maiden's smile the world will move, 
With lover's tears for joy's good hap." 

" Dearest rose, to each other we're due, 
We '11 marry the coming Easter morn, 
Believe me, I '11 be more kind to you 

Than both your parents since you were born. 

" Mother, do you hear my lover's vow, 
Believe me, my pearl will be my life. 
Dear mother, let me go to him now, 
I die to tell him I'll be his wife." 

" My darling, don't trust to young men's speech, 
He '11 love you while you are not his own, 
But marriage its sorry lore will teach, 

With a cudgel's blow to make you groan." 

" I have seen my father beat you too, 

But for all his blows you love him dear ; 
I 'm sure I can love as well as you, 

And no warning voice shall make me fear." 

THE THREE ORPHANS. 

" Where go ye, dear orphans three ? " 

" Far from this place for work to seek." 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 299 

" Oh, do not go, dear orphans three, 

For work you are too small and weak." 

" Come, I will give you three small wands, 
Upon your mother's grave to knock." 

" Arise, arise, our mother dear, 

Cold and ragged are your flock." 

" I cannot rise, dear orphans three, 

Within my shroud I 'm dried to bone ; 
But you have now a second mother, 
Who will tend you as her own." 

" When she combs our tangled hair, 

Her talons scratch and make us bleed, 
And when she gives us food to eat, 
'T is with curses she would feed." 



BUGA JAKAB. 

" Why do you grumble, comrade, that there 's nothing in your 
purse ? 

God is good, his gifts are sure, keep up your heart from woe ; 
The winter it will soon be past, the bloom come to the furze, 

And where our eyes look round us we will go." 

" How can I help my sadness, lad, how can I drop my care ? 

All the ills of life I feel in my bosom sore ; 
I cannot sleep nor rest, nor breathe refreshing air, 

My heart is in a well and covered o'er. 

" My side is naked to the blast, my coat to rags is torn, 
My shoulder blade is bleeding raw, where my belt will chaf e> 



300 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

My horse has lost a shoe behind, the others they are worn, 
And I 'm afraid that none of them are safe. 



" In my mantle the rain has soaked, and rotted its strength 
away, 

I cannot hope for another ; no one will make a gift ; 
I have my wallet still, but bare and empty it must stay ; 

But that is not the worst of all my shrift. 

" From my trimming of good wolf's fur the hair is falling out, 
Across my flagon's mouth the spider has spun a sheet ; 

The joys of youth have left me ; no one comes me about, 
To wash my sweated shirt and make it neat." 

" For all the ills of life, my friend, one lives as best one may. 

The blest rays of the sunshine still warm my heart and 
breast. 
When I can't eat, I light my pipe, and puff my care away. 

Poor fellows live ; I live as do the rest." 

THE FAIR ILONA. 

" Heaven bless you, 
Judge, my lord, 
Keep your house 
In safe accord." 

" What kind fortune 
Did you send 
To my house 

Your steps to bend ? " 

" I led my geese 

To meadows green, 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 301 

The judge's son 

With stones was seen, 
He killed my gosling 

Of yellow sheen.'* 

" What shall be paid, 
Ilona fair, 
For thy young gosling 
The lad killed there?" 

" For each of his feathers, 

A ducat bright ; 
For each of his feet, 

A spoon so white ; 
For his two wings 

Two salvers dight ; 
For his warbling throat 

A horn of might." 

" If your demands 
You place so high, 
Upon the gallows 
The lad must die." 

" May the gallows tree 
Be a rose, my lord, 
And my two arms 
Its strangling cord." 

THE BRIGAND'S WIFE. 

Often my father and mother I prayed 
Not to send me up to the mountain high, 



302 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

To the mountain cold, where the brigand strayed, 
And waited to clutch me as I came nigh. 

At this very hour at the highway cross, 
He waits for the stranger to rob his gold, 

The robbed has only his money's loss, 

But the wretched robber his soul has sold. 

In the morn I rise bloody clothes to lave, 

In the early morn, where the stream runs still. 
" Why weepest thou, girl ? " " No sorrows I have, 
But my fire's sharp smoke has made my eyes fill." 



THE GIRL AND THE SHEPHERD. 

The night sinks softly on the plain, 

The heifer's bell is still ; 
A lone pipe calls with magic strain — 

The girl leans on the sill. 

" Here on the prairie I am alone ; 
My cows and horses rest ; " 
The young girl to the plain has gone 
With longing in her breast. » 

The master's herd is moving slow ; 
The young girl follows on ; 
" Dear shepherd, spread your soft cloak now 
The dewy earth upon." 

The wheat has not filled out its ear, 
But birds have picked the grain ; 
" See, mother, in the early year, 

How love has brought me pain." 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 303 

" My daughter, I will curse your name, 

If you the shepherd wed." 
" Mother, I '11 bear your fiercest blame, 

My heart will rest his head." 

THE THEEE SCARFS. 

I 've bought three scarfs of white ; 

I '11 be white as any swan, 
And none will dare embrace me, 

When the three white scarfs I don. 

I Ve bought three scarfs of red ; 

I '11 be red as any rose ; 
My love will rain his kisses 

When such a floweret blows. 

I 've bought three scarfs of gold ; 

I '11 be yellow as its hue ; 
I '11 glitter like a weathercock, 

While all the world shines new. 

I 've bought three scarfs of brown ; 

I '11 be brown as any owl ; 
None will dare to ask a kiss 

From such a timorous fowl. 

THE LOVELIEST FLOWER OF ALL. 

In the harvest field there are three flowers. 

These words said the bright flower of corn : 
I am the brightest that charms the hours, 
I 'm gathered for the church, and they say I 'm the flesh of 
Christ new born. 



304 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

In the harvest field there are three flowers, 
These words said the flower of the vine : 
I am the brightest in all the bowers, 
I 'm gathered for the church, and they say the red blood of 
Christ is mine. 

In the harvest field there are three flowers, 
These words said the wee violet blue : 
I am the brightest beneath the showers, 
For the young maidens cull me to deck the hats of those they 
love so true. 



THE LONESOME ONE. 

Before thy door the bright, green corn 

Bends o'er the pebbly path, 
Its blooming flowers are not yet born — 

Two doves coo in the math. 

Comes tripping by a village lass : 

Her skirts are wet with dew, 
Has she been raking the moistened grass ? 

Oh, I am far from you. 



My sweetheart, I 'm as far from you 
As I have been for years, 

Of her I ask each stranger new, 
No tidings reach my ears. 



O'er the lone prairie the wind whistles cold, 
The young shepherd sadly follows his way. 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 305 

" Where is your flock ? " " Oh, my sheep I have sold." 
" Where is your gayety ? " " Vanished away." 

" Your sheep you have sold ! Why did you so ? " 
" Because on earth I shall need nothing more." 

" Why did your light heart to a sad one grow ? " 
" Because my false love has wounded it sore." 

" God guard you, dear prairie, and comrades brave, 
My reed pipe again I shall never play." 
O'er the lone prairie the bitter winds rave, 
The young shepherd sadly follows his way. 



May beetle, golden beetle ; 

I do not ask when summer will come ; 
I do not ask how long I shall live, 

I only ask for my rose in bloom. 

May beetle, golden beetle ; 

I do not ask for the summer's light, 
For a summer's fire in my heart has burned, 

Since my rose first flamed upon my sight. 



The time will come, the time will come, 

When you will come to weep before the house ; 

When you will clasp the doorpost of the entrance, 
In deep regret for your unfaithful vows. 

The time will come, the time will come, 

When you will come to weep before my door. 

Perhaps I may a word or two say to you, 
But not the words I said to you before. 



306 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

When I was a gallant lad, 

I 'd come from my door with glee ; 

I 'd thrill the air with shouts of joy, 
And the world would know 't was me. 

Now I am a graybeard old, 

I come from my door with pain, 

Let me shout as loud as I may, 
No voice will answer again. 



The petals of the white rose fall ; 

To-day another weds my rose. 
Through the wood the violins call, 

And my heart shuts tight with its woes. 

The shining star adorns the night, 
In vain for thee my heart has beat, 

My star for me has quenched its light, 
But in my heart its ray is sweet. 



At Dobreesen flowers a fair rose-tree ; 

It bears a lovely perfumed rose, 
But what is that lovely rose worth to me, 

If far beyond my reach it blows. 

The young postilion is sounding his horn, 
He brings a letter from my dear. 

But her letter of gold leaves me forlorn, 
Since she comes not to meet me here. 



Down there under the steep hillside, 
A small apple-tree blooms in pride. 



HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 307 

Its flowers are fair ; its fruit is sweet, 
A little maiden sits at its feet. 



She tresses garlands of red and white ; 
On her breast they turn to silver bright. 

She lifts her eyes to the heavens vast, 
And sees a wide road winding past. 

Its borders two like silver gleam, 
The middle is a golden stream. 

A lamb walks there with curly bell, 
On each curl point tinkles a bell. 



The wild duck broods in the reedy grass, 
In the meadow rich ripens the corn, 

But the place where lives a faithful lass 
I never have found since I was born. 



In the lonesome night the stars are falling, 

The young man drags his feet toward the house. 

Heavy in his heart are voices calling, 

And hatred of the world his miseries arouse. 

In the lonesome night the stars are falling, 
In the white mansion the candle glimmers red. 

Flowers strew the couch. Oh, the sight appalling ! 

The brown girl in her shroud lies stretched upon her bed. 



308 HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONGS. 

They are sweeping the wide street. 

The soldiers start marching down ; 
A maid of sixteen, red and sweet, 

Is following out of town. 

The young captain turns and speaks : 
" What this means I must know." 

She answers with tear-wet cheeks, 
" I follow where'er you go." 



The roads are thick with snow, 
The black steed gallops wide. 

His bridle reins hang low 
In his mad master's ride. 

The brigand on the steed 

Breathes deep, and sadly sighs, 
" I dreamed not, in my need, 
She 'd sell me to the spies. 

" Of all the brigands cursed, 
Who rob on the wide plain, 
The soldiers seek me first, 
To bind me with a chain. 

" My father was a thief, 

My grandfather likewise. 
To honest life's relief, 

How can such seed arise ? " 



FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 

It gives one a strange idea of what treasures 
of primitive poetry and music may yet be found 
among the peasantry of Europe, when a volume 
like this — The Bard of the Dimbovitza, Rouma- 
nian Folk-Songs. Collected from the Peasants by 
Helene Vacaresco. Translated by Carmen Sylva 
and Alma Strettell — has been brought to light 
from the single district of Roumania. The pre- 
face by Carmen Sylva (the Queen of Roumania), 
herself an accomplished literary artist, says that 
these songs were collected from the lips of peasant 
girls, the lute players, the reapers, and the gypsies, 
by the young poetess Helene Vacaresco, in the dis- 
trict of Roumania, in which her father's domain is 
situated. She spent four years in collecting them, 
and even although her family has been known and 
honored for centuries by the people, she encoun- 
tered many difficulties in endeavoring to induce 
the peasants to repeat their songs to her. "She 
was forced to affect a desire to learn spinning 
that she might join the girls at their spinning 
parties, and so overhear their songs more easily; 



310 FOLK-SONGS OF BOUMANIA. 

she hid in the tall maize to hear the reapers croon- 
ing; she caught them from the lips of peasant 
women, of lute players (' Cobzars,' so called from 
the name of their instrument, the cobza, or lute), 
of gypsies, of fortune tellers ; she listened for them 
by death-beds, by cradles, at the dance, and in the 
tavern with inexhaustible patience." The result 
is a volume which is not only equal in quality to 
that of the finest folk-song and poetry which any 
European nation possesses, and with a peculiar 
and original flavor of its own, revealing strong and 
original national characteristics, but, one is tempted 
to say, with more of the sublimated and naked 
essence of poetry than can be found in any work of 
modern civilized poets. There are times when the 
vivid strength of simple passions, expressed with 
the force of naked directness without any weaken- 
ing refinement of language, the feelings of a people 
to whom love is a genuine and undisguised passion, 
in whom hatred burns the blood and finds relief in 
the shot or the stab, to whom death is an object of 
vital horror as the end of life and happiness, and 
to whom religion is an embodiment of direct super- 
natural power, produce a poetry, which reaches a 
force of expression and touches the heart with a 
power to which all modern refinements of thought 
and language are unable to attain. It is, in com- 
parison, as if a cloud of unreality, the emanations 



FOLK-SONGS OF BOUMANIA. 311 

of artificial thoughts and sentiments, or the dust, 
as it were, of ages, had fallen upon the native fresh- 
ness of feeling and language, and that civilized 
men were no longer able to feel so deeply or to 
speak so clearly as those who had never been 
burdened with knowledge, or the strength of whose 
emotions had not been diluted by the restraints and 
refinements of civilization, transcendental religion, 
or artificial society. There is, of course, a power 
and subtlety of thought in minds which have in- 
herited the world's wisdom and knowledge, and 
their thoughts have a scope and extent to which 
those of unlettered peasants are strangers, and 
their views of the problems of life and humanity 
are as those of a man to a child ; but the strength 
of their feeling in simple passion is much diluted 
and their powers of expression are correspondingly 
less, so far as vividness and simplicity are con* 
cerned. As an illustration of the weakness of 
purely artistic literature, whatever its beauty and 
skill, to touch the depths of feeling like the purely 
unsophisticated language of the natural poets, who 
simply endeavored to express their emotions with- 
out thought of form or artistic melody, may be 
compared the closing aspiration of the famous and 
beautiful serenade in Maud, — 

She is coining, my own, my sweet ; 

Were it ever so airy a tread, 
My heart would hear her and beat, 



312 FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 

Were it earth in an earthy bed ; 
My dust would hear her and beat, 

Had I lain for a century dead ; 
Would start and tremble under her feet, 

And blossom in purple and red, — 

with the simple utterance of the Javanese lover in 
one of the natural flowers of folk-song, — 

I do not know when I shall die, 

I have seen at Badoer many that were dead, 

They were dressed in white shrouds, and 

Were buried in the earth ; 
• If I die at Badoer and am buried beyond the 
Village eastward against the hill, 

Where the grass is high, 
Then will Adinda pass by there, and the border 
Of her sarong will sweep softly along the grass, — 
I shall hear it. 

There are times when the vitality of poetry 
seems to be lost as one feels the simple and direct 
power of some of these ancient songs which spring 
from the heart and not from the head, and all 
modern verse seems like the pale and artificial 
product of intellectuality, weakened feeling, and 
language refined until it has lost its strength, and 
one is almost tempted to believe that civilization is 
as fatal to poetry as it is to religious enthusiasm. 
Of course this is not the case. The human heart 
has not lost its strength of feeling nor its power 
of expression, and modern poetry is greater in its 



FOLK-SONGS OF BOUMANIA. 313 

power and wider in its scope than folk-song. But 
it has lost some of the peculiar strength which 
comes from simplicity of feeling and overmaster- 
ing power of passion ; and its language, if it has 
many delicate shades of meaning, which that of a 
primitive people has not, has lost the clearness and 
vividness of expression of those whose words are 
few, but which are the creation of their hearts and 
not of their intellects. 

These folk-songs of Eoumania are full of the 
pathos and strength of simple passions, and they 
show a native poetical spirit and power of the 
imagination which is rare in any nation. Doubt- 
less many of them are old, the inheritance of long 
tradition and familiar forms of expression, but it is 
indicated that many of them are new, and that the 
stock is being constantly added to by the force of 
a poetic inspiration, which is still in full life and 
flower. We are told that many of the spinning 
songs are improvisations, the girls all standing in 
a circle, the best spinner or singer in the centre, 
and that she begins to improvise a song, which is 
passed on for continuance with the distaff to any 
one whom she may select. Doubtless these are 
on familiar themes and with familiar forms of 
expression, like all folk-songs, but they show the 
vital spirit of poetry still existing, and the bulk of 
more elaborate compositions is probably still being 



314 FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 

added to. This fact confirms the belief, which in- 
telligent observers have noted, that the Roumanians 
and the kindred peoples of this race have an intel- 
lectual power which is of an undecayed and still 
progressive people, very different from the effete 
Ottomans by whom they were so long oppressed, 
and that, if the future promised an opportunity for 
original development, instead of absorption into the 
Muscovite empire, they might produce a homoge- 
neous and progressive nation with original features 
and an independent contribution to civilization. 
At any rate the volume gives evidence of remarka- 
ble intellectual power among the Roumanian peas- 
antry, and it may be hoped that this treasure-trove 
will stimulate other researches, and the discovery 
of a larger bulk of native poetry, if none of finer 
value. Whether any touch of sentiment has been 
added in the translations with the higher poetic 
form in some instances cannot, of course, be appar- 
ent, but the internal evidence would indicate that 
essential faithfulness has been preserved and that 
the substance is as genuine as the poetry is original 
and powerful. 

Some of the most striking songs in the collection 
are those of the gypsies, which have a wild and 
fiery tone like the gypsy music which has stirred 
the blood of refined civilization, as it has been per- 
formed by orchestras with all the effect of modern 



FOLK-SONGS OF BOUMANIA. 315 

instrumentation, in a way that the most skillful 
composers have failed to do, and shows the ele- 
ment of poetry and passion in that strange and 
exotic race. What stronger beauty of expression 
or grace of feeling can be found than this ? — 

There where the path to the plain goes by, 
Where deep in the thicket my hut doth lie, 
Where corn stands green in the garden plot — 
The brook ripples by so clearly there, 
The way is so open, so white, and fair — 
My heart's best beloved, he takes it not. 

There where I sit by my door and spin, 
While morning winds that blow out and in 
With scent of roses enfold the spot, 
When at evening I softly sing my lay, 
That the wand'rer hears, as he goes his way — 
My heart's best beloved, he hears it not. 

There, where on Sunday I go alone 

To the old, old well with the milk-white stone, 

Where by the fence, in a nook forgot, 

Rises a spring in the daisied grass, 

That makes whoso drink of it love — alas ! 

My heart's best beloved, he drinks it not. 

There, by my window, where day by day, 

When the sunbeams first brighten the morning gray, 

I lean and dream of my weary lot, 

And wait his coming, and softly cry 

Because of love's longing that makes one die — 

My heart's best beloved, he dieth not. 



316 FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 

A peculiar character in the Roumanian songs 
is that of the Heicluck, a sort of combination, it 
would seem, of the knight - errant and the brig- 
and, with all the legendary attributes of beauty, 
strength, courage, and generosity of the half-fabu- 
lous popular heroes of all nations. The Song of 
the Heiduck has all the buoyant spirit and gayety 
appropriate to such a figure, but is overshadowed 
also by a sort of elfin sadness and the doom of a 
supernatural fate, which is chiefly to be found in 
those nations which have a tinge of oriental mys- 
ticism, and is a marked feature of the Roumanian 
folk-songs. The Celtic mysticism, where it exists, 
is more strictly religious. 

THE HEIDUCK'S SONG. 

i" tell the forest the wonders I see in my dreams 
And the forest loves to hear the tale of my dreaming 

More than the song of birds, 

More than the murmur of leaves. 

The huts had well-nigh beguiled me to stay, for the windows 
Stood wide, and the smiles of the maidens shone out from 

within, 
But the Heiduck am I — and I love the far-stretching roads 

And the plain, and my galloping steed. 
My mother gave birth to me, sure, on a sunshiny morning, 
And had I but never known love, ah, how happy were I ! 
I sing at the hour when the moon climbs above the horizon ; 
The tales that the aged folk know, I can tell, every one, 



FOLK-SONGS OF BOTJMANIA. 317 

And I make the young dance, when I sing, to the tune of 
my ballads. 
For I a strange woman have loved ; 
She comes every night to me now, and she kisses my forehead, 
And asks if I love her still. 
She carries a knife in her girdle — her eyes have a glitter 
Like daggers — her hand is as white as the veil of a bride ; 
But her voice I have never heard — yet know I full surely, 
She asks if I love her still. 
In token thereof I have given her up my girdle, 
My cap with its feathers gay, 
My mantle with broid'ry brave, and my glitt'ring daggers. 
And my songs, I have given them all to her, one by one, 
Yet the gayest bring no smile to her face, and the saddest 

Are powerless to make her sad. 
Then hence she goes, by the small plank over the river 

The plank that sways to her step. 
The willows bow down their heads, and bend as she passes . . . 
And morning cometh, and findeth me poor and trembling, 
Since she hath taken my all from me, even my songs. 
Yet is she not content, nor will cease from asking, 
Whether I love her still. 

/ tell the forest the wonders I see in my dreams 
And the forest loves to hear the tale of my dreaming, 

More than the song of birds, 

More than the murmur of leaves. 

Almost all the songs have the refrain, as in this 
example, which is not, necessarily, directly asso- 
ciated with the subject of the song, but is suggested 
by some incident, circumstance, or scene brought to 



318 FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 

the mind at the time of the recital. As often in 
the old Scotch ballads, it adds a weird and touch- 
ing effect like a dominant note in music, or a sym- 
bolical background to a picture. 

A marked feature in these folk-songs of Kouma- 
nia, as in those of all other nations, is the place 
which fighting has in them, the songs of the sol- 
diers who are going to battle for their native land, 
and the emotions of heroism, courage, and self- 
devotion ; but as in all these songs there is an 
underlying element of melancholy, mysticism, and 
refined and delicate feeling, quite different from 
the savage ferocity, heartiness, and humor of more 
northern nations, and there is no trace whatever of 
the farcical rudeness and cunning which is attached 
to some of the heroes of the Scandinavian ballads. 
The sentiments expressed are those of singular re- 
finement for a primitive people, and the general tone 
of the soldier songs is one of sadness and con- 
tent in death, rather than of the fierce joy and hope 
of the conflict, as in the following characteristic 
specimen : — 

"I AM CONTENT." 

A spindle of hazel-wood had I • 

Into the mill-stream it fell one day 

The water has brought it me back no more. 

As he lay a-dying the soldier spake — 
" I am content. 



FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 319 

Let my mother be told in the village there, 
And my bride in the hut be told, 
That they must pray with folded hands, 
With folded hands for me." 
The soldier is dead — and with folded hands, 

His bride and his mother pray. 
On the field of battle they dug his grave, 
And red with his life-blood the earth was dyed, 

The earth they laid him in. 
The sun looked down on him there and spake, 

" I am content." 
And flowers bloomed thickly upon his grave, 
And were glad they blossomed there. 

And when the wind in the treetops roared, 
The soldier asked from the deep, dark grave, 
" Did the banner flutter then ? " 
" Not so, my hero," the wind replied, 
" The fight is done, but the banner won, 
Thy comrades of old have borne it hence, 

Have borne it in triumph hence." 
Then the soldier spake from the deep, dark grave : 

" I am content." 
And again he heard the shepherds pass, 

And the flocks go wand'ring by, 
And the soldier asked, " Is the sound I hear, 

The sound of the battle's roar ? " 
And they all replied : " My hero, nay ! 
Thou art dead, and the fight is o'er, 
Our country joyful and free." 
Then the soldier spake from the deep, dark grave : 
" I am content." 



320 FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 

Then he heareth the lovers laughing pass, 
And the soldier asks once more : 
" Are these not the voices of them that love, 

That love and remember me ? " 
" Not so, my hero," the lovers say : 
" We are those that remember not ; 
For the spring has come and the earth has smiled, 

And the dead must be forgot." 
Then the soldier spake from the deep, dark grave : 
" I am content." 

A spindle of hazel-wood h'ad I ; 
Into the mill-stream it fell one day, — 
The water has brought it me back no more. 

As has been said, the underlying and predomi- 
nant element of these Roumanian folk-songs is 
melancholy, and rarely, if ever, in those of any 
nation, is the sorrow of death and parting more 
vividly and powerfully expressed. The voices 
speak from beyond the grave, but they seem to 
intensify rather than lighten the grief, and the 
calm and beauty of nature bring no consolation 
to the stricken heart, but only deepen the agony. 
This dirge for a child will speak to every one who 
has known anguish, as with the voice of the wail- 
ing wind : — 

The river went weeping, weeping, 
Ah, me, how it did weep ! 
But I would never heed it, 
The weeping of the river, 



FOLK-SONGS OF BOUMANIA. 321 

Whilst thou were at my breast. 

The stars — poor stars — were weeping, 

But I would not hear their weeping, 

Whilst yet I heard thy voice. 
Unhappy men drew nigh, and told me of their woe, 
They said : " We are the sorrow of all humanity." 
But I had no compassion for human misery, 

Whilst thou wert with me still. 

Then these, the river with its weeping, 

The piteous stars, the miserable men, 
All prayed the earth's dark depths to take thee from me, 
That so my woe might understand their woe ; 
And now — I weep. 

Yet weep I not for human misery, 

Nor for the stars' complaining, 

Nor for the river's wailing. 

I weep for thee alone, most miserly, 

Keep all my tears for thee ! 
Now I must rock forever empty arms, 
That grieve they have no burden any more. 
Now I must sing, and know, the while, no ears 

Are there to hearken. 

The birds will ask me, " To whom singest thou ? " 

The moon look down and ask, " Whom rockest thou ? " 

The grave will be right proud, while I am cursed, 

That I did give her thee. 
My womb upbraideth me because I gave 
To Death the gift that once she gave to me, 

The gift that sprung from her. 
Now must I see thy sleep and never know 

Whether this sleep be sweet. 



322 FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 

Then do I ask of Earth 
" Is the sleep sweet indeed 
That in thy lap we sleep ? " 
But, ah ! thou knowest Earth misliketh pity, 
And loves to hold her peace ! 

Wilt thou then answer in her stead, and say, 
" What do the birds, O mother, 

Since I have gone to sleep ? 

And the river with its pebbles, 

Since I have gone to sleep ? 

And thy broken heart, O mother, 

Thy little heart, dear mother, 

Since I have gone to sleep ! 

Does my father guide the oxen 

Walking beside the ploughshare. 

Since I have gone to sleep ? " 

Oh, say all this to me ! 
Answer instead of Earth that knows no pity, 

And loves to hold her peace. 

The river went weeping, weeping, 
Ah, me, how it did weep ! 
But I would never heed it, 
The weeping of the river, 
Whilst thou were at my breast. 
The stars, poor stars, were weeping, 
But I would not hear their weeping, 
Whilst yet I heard thy voice. 

And this other has a beautiful and touching senti- 
ment : — 



FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 323 

The river last night swept the bridge away, 
And so we must wade through the river to-day. 
The maidens sing as they wade, and are gay. 

A little sister the dead child had, 

Since it died little sister has grown more glad, 

And saith to the mother : " Its own sweet smile 

The one that is dead unto me did give, 

And all the life that it might not live 

Now lives in me." But the mother, the while 

Fell a-weeping, and bowed her head, 

And remembered the child that was dead. 

The river last night swept the bridge away, 
And so we must wade through the river to-day. 
The maidens sing as they wade, and are gay. 

There are other sources of grief than that of 
simple death, whose sorrow can weep itself away, 
the tragedies of crime and sin and the agonies of 
remorse. There is an occasional touch of that 
ferocity which rejoices in a bloody revenge, as 
would be natural to a passionate people, and 
which is manifested in the Song of the Dagger. 

The dagger at my belt that dances 

Whene'er I dance : 
But when I drink the foaming wine cup, 

Then it grows sad ; 
For it is thirsty, too, the dagger, 

It thirsts for blood. 

But for the most part the songs which relate to 
violence and bloodshed are the expressions of the 



324 FOLK-SONGS OF EOUMANIA. 

remorse that follows the crime, and with a touch 
of the prevailing mysticism in the reproach of 
natural objects. The water refuses to quench the 
thirst of the murderer, and the trees to give him 
shelter, and he wanders on an endless way haunted 
by the voice of his crime. The poem entitled 
The Outcast expresses this feeling of mysterious 
remorse and unending and unavailing expiation. 

THE OUTCAST. 

Go not over the little bridge, 

It is too old. 
The trees that have been felled to the earth 
And the birds that still would perch upon their boughs. 
Must fly very close to earth. 

Why do they ask me, " Is it thou ? " 

Nay, nay, I know of nothing; 

No one has told me aught, yet all are afraid of me, 

The stones upon the road shrink from my footsteps, 

But I am wearier far than if I had trodden them, 

I am always left alone, and yet I hear voices always ; 

My sleep is never disturbed, and yet I feel 

As though I had never slept. 

Know ye why I am weary, so very weary, 

That if the grave should say to me, " Lie down 

Here in my lap and rest " I would bless the grave ? 

It is this : I carry one upon my shoulders, 

I carry him onward ever, and feel his hands 

About my throat, his breath upon my neck. 

It is he that makes my step so heavy, 



FOLK-SONGS OF EOUMANIA. 325 

And drives me wild, too, with the sound of his voice, 

It is he that drinks my sleep, 

And when I ask him, " Whither shall I take thee 

That I may carry thee no more ? " 

He points to the horizon. 

He is as heavy as a widow's heart. 

I know, too, all his thoughts, and his thoughts burn me, 

Because he thinks upon my sorrow. 

And when we pass some hut, I say, 

" Let us linger here awhile, this hut seemeth pleasant to me," 

But he answers, " Never a hut may open its doors to thee," 

And when I ask him, ' ' Friend, art thou not yet weary ? " 

He answers, " I ? I rest in thy weariness, 

Refresh myself in thy sweat." 

Even on my own hearth 

I can never set him down over against me, 

He clings to my shoulders always — 

I know not even his face. 

Then I say to him, " Thou unknown one ! " 

And he answers me, " Thou accurst ! " 

Go not over the little bridge, 

It is too old. 
The trees that have been felled lie on the earth 
And the birds that still would perch upon their boughs 
Must fly very close to earth. 

One of the peculiar customs of Roumania is 
that of two girls of different families choosing each 
other as sisters by affinity, called suratas, or 
" sisters of the cross," a relationship sanctioned by 
the church, and acting as the tie of blood in rela- 
tion to family marriages. It is this custom which 



326 FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 

is alluded to in the charming ballad, which recalls 
the best of those of Spain on similar subjects, with 
its delicate feeling and graceful expressions : — 

HE THAT TOOK NOTHING. 

See how it raineth ! and the corn is cut upon the plain, 
And I have left my sickle, too, forgotten 'mid the grain. 
Now there it lies — ah, woe is me ! — beneath the falling rain. 

Of all the lads that joined the dance each took some sign 

from me — 
One took my girdle, and thou know'st full well which that 

may be, 
The one, my sister of the cross, I fashioned with thee. 

My chain, sweet sister of the cross, another took ; what needs 
To tell thee which — the one which hath two strings of 
golden beads. 

Another took my flower from me — and which one dost thou 

know ? 
It is, my sister of the cross, the floweret that doth blow 
In aittumn days among the grass, where thick the plum-trees 

grow. 

But only one took naught away, and know'st thou, sister, who ? 
He of whom I often spake of thee, when I most silent grew, 
He, my little sister of the cross, it is I love so true. 

Then quick run after him, he dwells beside the mill-pool deep, 
And through his slumbers murmuring on, their watch the 

waters keep, 
O happy water, that may sing and lull him in his sleep. 



FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 327 

Then quickly run thou after him, my sister, do not stay 

To watch the flocks upon the hill, that browse the livelong 

day; 
Bring him a girdle, and a chain, yea, and a flower — and 



"I found them hard beside the mill, and all of them are 

thine." 
But stay not longer lest thou, too, should'st love him, sister 

mine. 

That we may both not have to weep together, oh, beware ! 
My tears could not love thy tears, not yet my care thy care, 
They could not dwell within my hut, nor would be welcome 
there. 

See how it raineth ! and the corn is cut upon the plain, 
And I have left my sickle, too, forgotten 'mid the grain, 
Now there it lies — ah, woe to me! beneath the falling rain. 

The spinning songs, which are absolutely im- 
provisations, have, of course, all the inevitable 
character o£ abruptness and irregularity, but a 
charming grace of feeling is often visible through 
them, and their imagery is as effective as it is 
spontaneous and natural. 

SPINNING SONG. 

What didst thou, mother, when thou wert a maiden ? — 

I was young. — 
Didst thou, like me, hark to the moon's soft footfalls, 

Across the sky ? 
Or didst thou watch the little stars' betrothal ? — 



328 FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 

Thy father coineth home, leave the door open — 

Down to the fountain didst thou go, and there 
Thy wooden pitcher filled, didst thou yet linger 
Another hour with the full pitcher by thee — 
I was young, — 

And did thy tears make glad thy countenance ? 
And did thy sleep bring gladness to the night ? 
And did thy dreams bring gladness to thy sleep ? 
And didst thou smile even by graves, despite 
Thy pity for the dead ? 

Thy father cometh home, leave the door open 

Loved'st thou strawberries and raspberries, 
Because they are as red as maidens' lips ? 
Didst thou love thy girdle for its many pearls, 
The river and the wood, because they lie 
So close behind the village ? 

Didst love the beating of thy heart, 

There close beneath thy bodice, 

Even though 't were not thy Sunday bodice ? 

— Thy father cometh home, leave the door open. 

These specimens will give an idea of the charm, 
the grace, the pathos, and the melody of these Rou- 
manian songs, which are like the breath of wild 
mountain air, full of the voices of the birds and 
streams, the wailings of the wind, and the sad 
plaints of the human heart. There is scarce a 
page in the not very voluminous collection which 



FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. 329 

is not marked with some untaught grace of thought 
or language, and which has not the charm and 
power of simple and strong emotion. However 
literal they may be, and the impression is very 
strongly conveyed of their absolute faithfulness, 
they also owe much to the fine grace and skill and 
to the melody of the verse into which they have 
been rendered in a foreign language, and the lovers 
of poetry owe a grateful debt to Carmen Sylva 
and Miss Alma Strettell, who had been already 
favorably known for her translations of Greek folk- 
songs for the artistic quality of their translations. 
No richer treasury of primitive poetry has been 
disclosed for many years. 



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